I want my students to understand slavery: to feel it’s burden on their backs and minds, to see the scars it left behind on their “democratic” country.
The Slave Narratives:
Voices telling black stories
of their oppression.
Students hate documentaries that tell, so I find one that shows the damage done. It tells, as well, but looking straight at them with passionate pain.
My master’s three sons
took turns raping my mother:
how I came to be.
Some students cover their eyes. Others look on in terror. Annie covers her ears to the story of the man getting whipped who attempts silent defiance but cannot hold his composure:
Massa have mercy
on this poor filthy nigger.
Oh! Please have mercy.
They invoke these stories in response papers, some saying they’d run, others not seeing the point. Natalie’s response stands apart:
Crowded black people
produce heat and smell funny,
so I’d run away.
Tell me: how do you teach humanity?
