Comparison between 21th Century and 1800s

Slavery today in the 21th century has been abolished by the thirteen amendments, but it does not mean everyone gets along and is treated with respect by every other races. There are still many African Americans who get bad treatment from many other races in many different ways.  For example; there are a lot of African Americans who get discriminated from job opportunities, places, education and many other things. There are laws that have been created to protect African Americans from this treatment but there are still a lot of people who cannot be persuaded to give respect to African Americans. There are many people who still have the state of mind from the 1800s. Where they think that African Americans are low, not apart or humans, that they should still be equal to slavery etc. back in the 1800s African Americans didn’t have the rights to read, write, or learn in general, they didn’t have the rights to vote or become anything in life, now in the 21th century there is an African American president, everyone can vote by the age of eighteen, and everyone is entitled to a free public education. For the most part, in the 21th century, slavery is abolished. African Americans are free. They have the same rights as other people.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman was a slaver born in 1820 or 1821. It is not exactly known because she is a slave and most slave owners do not keep records of their slave’s birthdates. She was born in Buck town, Maryland. At age 5, she was sent to work in another plantation but was sent back because she was too sick to work. Once she recovered from her sickness, she was sent to another plantation to work as a nurse to the planter’s infant child. At age 12, she worked plowing and hauling wood as a field hand. Harriet married a man name john Tubman at the age of 25 in 1844. He was a freeman.  Harriet always wanted to be free. She told john that she wanted to be free just like him and he stated that she will never be free and if she tried to run he would turn her in. Harriet was lucky because her owners gave her permission to marry john and allowed her to live in a cabin with him.

Harriet was known as “mosses” to many slaves because she led over 300 blacks from the south (slavery) to the north (freedom). In 1849, after her master died and heard a rumor that two of her brothers had been sold to a chain gang that she run away from the plantation in the middle of the night and used the north start to free land in Pennsylvania.  Her other brothers had left with her that night but returned to the plantation because they were too scared. Her ambition was to help her family and friends win freedom as well.

Resources:

Information: http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/tubm-har.htm (Women in History: Living Vignettes of Notable Women Form U.S. history)

Picture 1: http://gardenofpraise.com/images/tubman2.jpg (This is a picture or Harriet Tubman herself)

Picture 2: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/virtualschool/images/harriettubman.jpg ( This is a picture of Harriet getting throw the underground railroad)

Clothing And Food

            Clothing and food that people wear and eat can determine a lot of things about a person. For example; style, culture, likes, dislike, etc. During the 1800s clothing helps some people determine where a slave is from (town slave or rural slave). Rural slaves wore a boorish cloth which was called “negro cloth” or “negro brogans” and these clothing’s were mended and re-mended. Town slaves had better clothes and even another traditional set for Sundays. City slaves dressed in broadcloth suits, blue coats, bright buttons, and gold chains. For a slave to be well-dressed and have good posture it meant that his master had good taste.

            Like with clothing the town’s slaves got fed more elegantly then people in the rural areas. This was because many slaves ate from there masters kitchen. Mostly any slave who ate in the town was fed better than the slaves that were servants in a country house and even better than slaves that worked in the field. Slaves that worked for larger corporate owners were fed by them because they bought large volumes of food. With the law making corporate owners give workers basic food, meat, bread, rice, vegetables, there were more slaves working. This food order also showed many people why plantation slaves were less healthy than other kind of slaves.

Resources:

Information: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/antebellumSlavery.html (History of Campbell County Tennessee: Antebellum Slavery)

Picture 1: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOWPKWLh6cXKs_15GXd81drgX0nn8EZ0r4VptpKobZzESWtbrozq7EbcyAQQUpC_Lsgy4JedzEvpUORF_LHjbDToCmaadH-buZZorMOi7wmwPmZR3DoNZPtKg2rYaaPWrNr-sOHr85YQ/s400/slaves4.jpg (in this picture you see the female slaves clothing look a little worst than male slaves)

Picture 2: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/photographs/slaves.jpg (in this picture you see that most of the kids do not have shoes and that there clothes are not clean)

Marriage For Slaves?

Being married to one another is a beautiful thing which could create other wonderful things in a person’s life, such as having a family. During the time of the slaves, being married had more down views than up views. Marriage was not an official guarantee. Most black slaves could not legally get married and if they did it was considered a major civil rights violation. When wanting to get married many effects were to come about for slaves. If they had a house it still did not equal to a home. Married couple would get a marriage contract which was as good as nothing. If master moved, not all of the family went with him, which meant that family could and would be sold. Husband and wives mostly belonged to different families, which meant working separately and eating separately. Marriages didn’t make a husband feel like the head of the family, if anything it made the master more in charge and owner of more, such as the wife and any kids they had belong to the masters wife. Husband would have to serve their master before serving their own family. It was very hard for the couple to find their own time for each other and children had no formal family life.

Resources:

Information: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/antebellumSlavery.html (History of Campbell County Tennessee- Antebellum Salvery)

Picture 1: http://faculty.umf.maine.edu/walter.sargent/public.www/web%20103/Broomstick%20marriage.jpg (This picture shows two African American slaves getting married)

Picture 2: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mpimages/mp091.jpg (This picture also shows to slaves getting married)