how could you?

no it's not a pattern: badly whipped back

am doing research on african slavery (my topic for my speech). i knew it was so cruel and inhumane, what they did to the africans... but this, this really broke my heart. as a father and husband, how can you stand to see your wife abused by the overseer and not do anything? but if you were to protect her, you're dead meat. what just perplexes me is how people think they can just own other people like how they own sheep or cows.

In his autobiography, Josiah Henson described how as a child he saw his father punished for attempting to protect his wife against the plantation overseer.

The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes from the neighbouring plantations were summoned to witness the scene. A powerful blacksmith named Hewes laid on the stripes. Fifty were given, during which the cries of my father might be heard a mile away, and then a pause ensured.



True, he had struck a white man, but as valuable property he must not be damaged. Judicious men felt his pulse. Oh! he could stand the whole. Again and again the throng fell on his lacerated back. His cries grew fainter and fainter, till a feeble groan was the only response to the final blows. His head was then thrust against the post, and his right ear fastened to it with a tack; a swift pass of a knife, and the bleeding member was left sticking to the place.



Then came a hurrah from the degraded crowd, and the exclamation, "That's what he's got for striking a white man."



Previous to this affair, my father, from all I can learn, had been a good-humoured and light-hearted man. His banjo was the life of the farm. But from this hour he became utterly changed. Sullen, morose, and dogged, nothing could be done with him. He brooded over his wrongs. No fear or threats of being sold to the far south - the greatest of all terrors to the Maryland slave - would render him tractable.



So off he was sent to Alabama. What was his fate neither my mother nor I have learned.



(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASwhipping.htm)





makes me so angry sometimes. oh the injustice!



anyway back to work. gotta prepare my speech and more articles to read.