Slavery

Throughout this week, we mainly focused on the idea of slavery. Slavery in America, and everywhere else was horrific. It was abuse to the African American people. It all began when the first African slaves were bought to Jamestown in the year of 1619. Slavery was carried on throughout many years, and the freedom of the African Americans were lost. Slaves were bought for labor, because people believed they were a more plentiful labor source. It is devastating to see people being treated this way. Everyone should be treated the same, no matter what religion or race they believe in. In my opinion, slavery should have never happened. Placing a difference between people is incorrect, and is not fair to everyone in the world. Slavery impacted our society greatly, but as time went on slavery started to decrease due to many leaders who choose to stand up against slavery. There were many people and many acts that were antislavery because these people knew that everyone needed freedom. These people knew that slavery in our society would destroy the unity in which our 50 states hold today.Without this discrimination, our society has evolved to try to become one. Currently, everyone is free and they have their right to choose their own religion, but still in our society today there are some racist acts which still affects people negatively.

Liberty in America

Liberty. Liberty has many different definitions and meanings according to many different people, but it's main purpose is freedom. Liberty is an act of freedom, it gives the societies today the freedom they deserve. It is astonishing to understand that one simple word like liberty could define an entire country like America. America has fought for liberty for years, and as of now we have liberty, we have freedom. During John Adams time, he was fighting for liberty for all men in America especially because of all the wars happening around him and all the free people getting affected. Since, we are talking about John Adams and the freedom of all men, John Adams wife Abigail Adams sent a letter to her husband talking about the freedom of women which was sort of ignored. She wanted to make sure that women get the freedom they deserve because women were the people working behind the men. They are the ones who take care of everything in the household, and work as well. Women deserve the freedom, just like men do so they both deserve liberty. It took some time to get the freedom of both men and women but today we have achieved it and if the question ever comes back to liberty, we will always fight for it. 

Oladah Equiano

Equiano was a slave carried on a slave ship and eventually was purchased by Micheal Henry Pascal. Even though his slavery, he wrote a journal and created it into a narrative. In American Literature class, we were to read chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 3 seemed to have some important events in Equiano's life because he was obviously physically purchased by a person to work for him. Now, if we look into details then I believe that Equiano's slave journal was not as harsh as many others would be looked upon. Despite reading only two chapters into the narrative, it seems to me that he is not physically hurt quite often. Also in this chapter, Equiano gets a new name from his master which is Gustavus Vassa. I believe this name was given to him because Pascal wanted to disguise Equiano's real name, so that he would not remember his past and can focus solely on his future. It's hard to say the exact reason behind this name change, but Gustavus Vassa was a man of a Danish ruler. It also could be that his name change occured because other slaves doing the same job as him had a name change as well, the name change was probably a way for Equiano to forget his identity.