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African American life in the United States has been framed by migrations, forced and free. A forced migration from Africa—the transatlantic slave trade—carried black people to the Americas. A second forced migration—the internal slave trade—transported them from the Atlantic coast to the interior of the American South. A third migration—this time initiated largely, but not always, by black Americans—carried black people from the rural South to the urban North. At the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, African American life is again being transformed by another migration, this time a global one, as peoples of African descent from all parts of the world enter the United States.
For much of eighteenth century, black people in South Carolina and Georgia—unlike those in Maryland and Virginia—resided in an immigrant society, more an extension of Africa than of Europe. With the slave trade open and the influx of “saltwater slaves” nearly continuous, lowland slaves had great difficulty forming families and reproducing themselves. The gender ratio among the newly arriving saltwater slaves was usually dramatically skewed, and acculturated slaves sometimes were reluctant to create families with the new arrivals. But by the middle of the eighteenth century, the black population of the Lowcountry began to reproduce itself and the number of African Americans grew, although it did so in tandem with newly arrived Africans. If at mid-century slaves in the Chesapeake had few opportunities to converse with Africans, Africans and African Americans in the Lowcountry knew each other well. With the advent of the plantation in mainland North America, the nature of slavery and then the slave trade changed. The beginnings of plantation production—tobacco in the Chesapeake in the late seventeenth century and rice in the Lowcountry in the early eighteenth century—increased the level of violence, exploitation, and brutality in these regions. Slaves worked harder, propelling their owners to new, previously unimagined heights of wealth and power. As they did, slave owners expanded their plantations and demanded more and more slaves, as slaves proved to be an extraordinarily valuable form of labor. Not only were they workers, but they reproduced themselves, adding to the owners’ wealth. Rather than arriving in ones and twos from the Atlantic littoral, boatloads of captives—generally drawn from the African interior—crossed the ocean. Although slavers deposited their human cargoes in ports from Providence to New Orleans, the vast majority of slaves who disembarked in mainland North America did so in the Chesapeake (largely Virginia and Maryland) and the Lowcountry (largely South Carolina, and Georgia). The captives then faced the nightmarish transatlantic crossing. The depths of human misery and the astounding death toll of men and women packed in the stinking hulls still remains difficult to fathom. Stripped naked and bereft of their every belonging, they boarded the ship and encountered—often for the first time—white men. Brandishing hot irons to mark their captives in the most personal way, these “white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair” left more than a physical scar. Many enslaved Africans concluded that the white men were in league with the devil, if not themselves devils. For other Africans, the trauma of having their skin seared confirmed that they were bound for the slaughterhouse to be eaten by the cannibals, who had stamped them in much the way animals were marked. 3. The theme of slavery in the WPA interviews Before starting analyzing the phenomenon of slavery it is necessary to enlighten the source of the main information on the topic. The mentioned above Works Project Administration (WPA) had the goal of stimulating the economy of the country and providing work for people on relief. The Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) was designed as a branch of the WPA. The FWP’s main directivity was the history of the United States of America made on the bases of oral stories of the eyewitnesses. It was made by a group of scholars, artists, and writers on relief who interviewed different people along the country making historical interviews. One of the issues the respondents were eager to talk about was slavery. It is necessary to mention that all these interviews were made throughout 1936-1940 and most of the people who could remember the terrible period of slavery were around 80. What these interviews describe is the respondent’s education, political views, religion, needs, observations, historical events he can share the impressions about. These interviews are nowadays known as WPA interviews and are highly valuable for any person who has the aim to examine the life of slaves during that period and to analyze different aspects of their life. Obviously, the majority of the interviews concerning the slave-issue were carried out with people living in the southern states of America that is to say with those who used to be slaves. Most of the slaves talked about their owners, the way they treated them and it did to their families. Slavery has always been the most shocking phenomena of our world. Slavery, by itself seems very unnatural and provokes mixed feelings from the heart of each person. Some people are descendants of those who used to be slaves years ago. Some faced “slavery” even in the contemporary times. And some people just simply do not understand the possibility of one human being considering another human being its slave. Slavery, by definition, is the first historical form of exploitation, under which a slave along with different implements of production becomes the private property of the slave owner. So, in other words slavery converts an individual human being into a “thing” or even some kind of consumer item. This phenomena has done a lot of harm to million of people, taking away lives and destroying the fate of the people who could have been happy. What does a contemporary person know about slavery? The answer will not be very profound. Nevertheless examples of good thesis statements, there is still much to say about it and a lot of thing to recall. It is common knowledge that slavery was eliminated with the end of the Civil War. The South was released from the burden that made the slavery to stop and that started destroying the prejudices concerning the color of skin. Nowadays, it is already history. And could be Americans would not have much information on this important historical issue if it was not for a project Works Projects Administration (WPA), which was introduced by federal government. These are only some of the 2 topic for a research paper,300 interview people whose stories a very alike. Nevertheless, analyzing the majority of the interviews it is necessary to point out strange facts: the slaves were very devoted to their masters. And even after they could leave on their own after the Civil War some of them stayed until the very end to do it. These black people, who experienced slavery impress the reader of the interviews with the ability of their families to preserve love inside no matter what was going on outside. These people were brutally treated, experienced inhuman pain and still had the strength to try to learn to read or al least to listen to somebody reading. Slavery brought a lot of fear to the lives of black people: black women were forced to have sexual encounters with their masters, slaves were punished by being whipped almost to death and their brother and sisters were forced to administrate the whippings; they had to work in any temperature conditions, sometimes even freezing; they had to lose their family members - just for being black and therefore slaves. It is necessary to pay tribute to all these people who in spite of the cruelty in their lives managed to remain kind inside and some of them even tried to understand their masters. Thought the master-slave relations did have exceptions they still remained unilateral, where the only side expressing its opinion was the master’s side. Nevertheless free college english papers, this has become one of the most important lessons for the human nation – there is no condition under which one person can possess supremacy over another one. 3.b. Interviewing Walter Calloway Here we see a bright example or it is even better to say – an exception of a very human attitude to the slaves from the side of their master. Nevertheless, slavery still remains slavery no matter how well people are treated. William Ballard even after having spent so many years in slavery, though in good conditions said: ”Of course I think slavery was bad. We is free now and better off to work”. This is an excellent example of how some slave-master relations were very constructive. All the petitions of the slaves were heard and taken into count.
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