African In America Documentary Analysis

In the South, many slaves were hurt and in pain whereas in the North, slaves were shown a golden ticket to happiness compared to the South. A Chosen Exile is an excellent novel that talks about identity during the time racism and slavery in the United States. The compilation of stories allows the reader to understand how history has significantly changed from the time of racism to modern day society. The nature of identity, is by default fluid, and naturally changes from time to time. Humans are able to grow from their surroundings, the people they know and by the opinions that are forced around

Douglass’s descriptions of the slave trade were extremely vivid, from the details of how American’s viewed slaves, to the sounds of whips cracking and how a woman was encumbered by the weight of the child she carried and the chains that she wore. These details would bring readers to know what it was like to be in a slaves shoes at that time. His speech is driven by first had accounts of the degradations of slavery and would not be credible if it wasn’t for this fact. I believe that Douglass’s tone throughout the speech was hopeful, he enforced the cause of the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society with the hopes of making the United States more complete when slavery ended. If Douglass operated off the thesis: “America is false to the past, false to

Reals of Slavery The powerful rhetoric, through purposeful words, anecdotes, and details show how they influence America to see the evils of slavery.The evils of slavery demonstrate how the slaves were whipped and shows this with rhetoric words in his autobiography “Frederick Douglass”. Powerful rhetoric helps Douglass influence for the abolitionist movement. Douglass uses powerful words to show the evils of slavery for the abolitionist movement. Slaves not knowing of their age as animals, show how just brutal there were as knowing little as their family too. Acknowledging, how slaves are treated compared with animals knowing “little of their age as horses know of theirs”(17).

From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped. To fail to do work to a respectable level means to be sold to another plantation and ripped away from one’s family.

Throughout this autobiography, Frederick Douglass reaches out to his readers to be compassionate to slaves, and persuades them using rhetorical devices when recounting his life's story. He uses striking imagery describing the pain his body endures in order to show how dehumanized slaves are and make their pain tangible to his northern audience, as well as builds his credibility to the readers by bringing up facts and stories of his first hand experience through life as a slave, while also gaining their sympathy. Exploiting the abuse of slaves, Frederick Douglass uses imagery of the interactions between his owner and his aunt, Hester, to enlighten and horrify readers about how these people were dehumanized by their owners and environment, and Douglass desires readers to sympathize.

For my cultural experience I chose to go to the Cincinnati Underground Railroad Freedom Center and tour the center as well as the Kinsey Collection of African American Art and History. I found myself changing in attitude as I walked through the center, I entered feeling “highly educated” so to speak, I had been learning about the history of African Americans since first grade. I knew about slaves, I knew about what they did to escape, I knew they worked hard and lived bad lives, however the freedom center made these realities true realities for me! I think there’s always been a bit of a disconnect with the fact that the most gruesome parts of our history actually happened, so although it was hard to come to terms with, I think this experience was important for me, eye opening, and forced me to really take a

The crowd cheered and roared when these words were delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. during his iconic Washington march speech in 1969. This was the time when America found itself torn apart in the racial conflicts. During the Civil Rights Movement, it was evident that not only black Americans but also many white Americans opposed the African American oppression. One such personality was John Howard Griffin, a Texan Journalist who documented his experiment of experiencing life as a ‘negro’ by deliberately turning his skin black through pigmentation and other medical procedures. The product that emerged out of his experiment is a book called Black Like Me.

Both Douglass and Denisovich write to criticize an oppressive institution in their society, and focus on a theme of “human dignity,” a similarity stemming from their experiences with said oppression. However, Douglass’ more receptive audience in the antebellum North gave him more leeway to incite action, compared to Solzhenitsyn’s residence in the USSR. These differences are reflected in the tone of each work; Douglass raises awareness about the brutality of black slavery and garners support for the abolitionist movement through an active narrative voice designed to strike an emotional chord with the audience, while Solzhenitsyn expresses his criticism by showing his audience the hopeless atmosphere of the gulag through a subdued

Along with being emotionally hurt, slaves were also beaten and mistreated, like at Legree’s. Despite Uncle Tom being the most well behaved and trusting slave, he was still beaten merely because he stood up for his beliefs. This shows how much of an impact slavery had on blacks, and how it affected them for the rest of their life. Lastly, Stowe wrote her book in order for people to understand that we are all human beings, and therefore we should be treated as one. A reader who is white and owns slaves can still relate to her characters in the book.

To voice their burden of being slaves, female slaves had to struggle a lot whereas male slaves recorded their anger, frustration and feelings of powerlessness, nonetheless, their common experience of dehumanizing conditions of slavery creates a powerful communal voice. Through their narratives, the black managed to esteem and preserve their value system including, music, songs, voodoo, beliefs, spirituals, religion, ancestors, kinship-ties, herbal medicines, food habits etc. The slave narratives have been read by critics as rerecording of history of slavery, as of humanity of the blacks as they also carried with them from ‘South’ by forging their cultural principles into new forms of expression that would sustain the conditions they met in ‘North’. Through these forms they were able to respond to social, racial and economic exploitation under which they