Slavery Condition In America

Many recognize slaves were kept under horrible conditions, but few understand its severity. This discrepancy between knowledge and actuality is caused by a lack of awareness of slavery’s true nature. Luckily, there are ways to see the severity of slavery, and the two primary documents selected for this assignment are an example Through imaging, the primary sources provide evidence of the poor physical conditions Africans suffered under slavery.
The first image depicts a slave ship with numerous African lined next to each other. This image is significant because it is an example of the harsh physical conditions Africans faced. Some conditions resulted from slave traders neglecting to stay within a certain number of slaves. According to The African American Odyssey, many captains chose to ignore their ship’s weight capacity and packed twice as many slaves (2.4.2). To accommodate, slaves were often laid on top of one another or chained very closely together to make space. The result of this, as image one shows, was very little room for movement.
The outcome of this cruelty manifested in many forms. One of those, according to the movie “Africans in America: Terrible
Unfortunately, the physical mistreatment of enslavement did not improve once bought. In fact, they were often similar to mistreatment on ships. Once on land, slaves were often put to work right away. In Barbadian plantations, for example, replacing slaves was cheaper than taking care of them (“Africans in America: Terrible Transformation”). This further promoted mistreatment slaves, resulting in slaves being worked to death. In the beginning, Americans did not work slaves to death as often as in the Caribbeans, but treatment was no better. Dr. Jones’ lecture on Africans In Colonial America highlights the Chesapeake Colonies eventual adoption of the Caribbean plantation system. This meant similar forms of brutalization occurred there as