How Did African Americans Obtain Control Over Their Lives
How African American slaves sought control over their lives
People of the African continent were transported to the New World with a sole purpose: enslavement. Between 1501 and 1866 over 12.5 million Africans were taken from their homeland to be enslaved across the Atlantic.1 The Middle Passage, as the journey is often called, brutally took many lives before ships arrived at their destination, killing approximately 1.8 million slaves-to-be. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the dreadful journey, only about 400.000 were taken directly to North America. There awaited them a life of poverty, coercion and hard labor. Enslavement prevented the African Americans from living the life of their choosing: slaves were physically abused and women often sexually harassed; they lived in poverty and were scarcely clothed and fed; families were ripped apart when children were sold to different slave owners; hard labor from sunrise to sunset dominated their daily lives. However, to say that they had absolutely no control over their lives would be an insult not only to their memory, but also to the strength, endurance and spirit of the African American people. …show more content…
Most of the slaves were not so much running away from something as running towards someone, often to a lover or a lost family member.3 From this perspective, even motherhood can be seen as a form of resistance. Enslaved women could be separated from their children at any time, even if they belonged to the same slave owner. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs writes how she escaped her master’s sexual harassments by running away. In the hope that her master would sell her children to their biological white father she hid herself in a tiny attic crawlspace at her grandmother’s for seven years. This way she protected her children from becoming plantation slaves en protected herself from sexual
People of the African continent were transported to the New World with a sole purpose: enslavement. Between 1501 and 1866 over 12.5 million Africans were taken from their homeland to be enslaved across the Atlantic.1 The Middle Passage, as the journey is often called, brutally took many lives before ships arrived at their destination, killing approximately 1.8 million slaves-to-be. Of the 10.7 million Africans who survived the dreadful journey, only about 400.000 were taken directly to North America. There awaited them a life of poverty, coercion and hard labor. Enslavement prevented the African Americans from living the life of their choosing: slaves were physically abused and women often sexually harassed; they lived in poverty and were scarcely clothed and fed; families were ripped apart when children were sold to different slave owners; hard labor from sunrise to sunset dominated their daily lives. However, to say that they had absolutely no control over their lives would be an insult not only to their memory, but also to the strength, endurance and spirit of the African American people. …show more content…
Most of the slaves were not so much running away from something as running towards someone, often to a lover or a lost family member.3 From this perspective, even motherhood can be seen as a form of resistance. Enslaved women could be separated from their children at any time, even if they belonged to the same slave owner. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Harriet Jacobs writes how she escaped her master’s sexual harassments by running away. In the hope that her master would sell her children to their biological white father she hid herself in a tiny attic crawlspace at her grandmother’s for seven years. This way she protected her children from becoming plantation slaves en protected herself from sexual