Ashira Sims

ENG 102
Professor Witherspoon
16 Feb. 2015
Slavery
Slavery has always been the most shocking phenomena of our world. Some people are
descendants of those who used to be slaves years ago. Slavery, by definition, is the first
historical form of exploitation, under which a person along with different implements of
production becomes the private property of the slave owner. This phenomena has done harm to
millions of people, taking away lives and destroying the fate of the people who could have been
happy. The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ended slavery after the Union won
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. It is possible that Americans
would not have much information on this important historical issue if it was not for the Works
Projects Administration (WPA), which was introduced by federal government. Nevertheless,
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.
There were stories of the ex-slaves that were full of unexpected details, unspoken
feelings, and hidden meanings. Those stories were about the brutalities that all of them
experienced being under slavery. These are the stories of people who lived their lives with the
perception of being unworthy and obeying white supremacy as a law. There were 2,300 ex-

slaves who had a lot in common with the stories that they shared. They mainly spoke about
religion, gender elations, material life, and slave-master relations and other aspects. These are
the stories of what was being black in the South and what a black person had to do in order to
survive and protect his right to live on this land.
The WPA interviewed numerous former slaves who were living in various states well into
the 1930s. William Ballard was born in Winnsboro, SC. He belonged to Jim Aiken who was a
large and famous landowner in Winnsboro. He also possessed seven huge plantations on which
his slaves worked. Although Jim Aiken was a powerful man, he never treated his slaves brutally.
And his wife also took care of the slaves. Walter Calloway was born in Richmond, Virginia.
The first thing that Walter remembered was being purchased as a slave by John Calloway. The
most ordinary punishment for black people not obeying were whippings and the most awful
thing about it was that white overseer never did it themselves but always had another black slave
to do it. The punishments that slaves got seemed to be not punishments but pure mockery,
including humiliation and severe beating. Last but not least Mary Reynolds. She was born in
Louisiana. Mary recalls being very friendly to other slaves on the plantation but she remembers
some slave to act indecently trying to make the master be favorable with them. Her master did
not have any mercy for his slaves and was very cruel to them. The conditions that the master
offered to the slaves were completely awful and no communication or petitions helped to
improve them.
Analyzing the majority of the interviews was to point out strange facts. Some former
slaves became sharecroppers due to racial discrimination and were often exploited easily due to
their lack of education. These slaves were brutally treated, experienced inhuman pain and still
had the strength to try to learn to read or write. 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.
Nevertheless, 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.