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To Be A Slave
The book I chose for the reading assignment was To Be A Slave, written by Julius Lester and illustrated by Tom Feelings. This book was a little but more unique than the other books that people are reading. There is no set character, place or setting. All the stories are broken up into different categories like, "The Auction Block" chapter where the stories that are gathered are about the slaves and how they were sold and taken away from their family. The places where most of the stories occur are in the south, places like Texas, Louisiana and Virignia. I think the plot or lesson that the stories are trying to get accross is that slavery was an extremely bad thing. We are very lucky that slavery isn't around as much as it used to because all people are created equally, and everyone has their own rights.
The part of the book that I found interesting was a story about a man after the Emancipation Proclomation was passed. Just for your information, the Emancipation Proclomation was a document that stated that all slavery was abolished, and that blacks are now free. This means that they can do anything they want, within the laws. Anyway, this man used to be a slave. He bought some land, a cabin, and a couple of animals. The local men didn't like this so they decided to hang him right in front of his cabin. I found this story very saddening because, even though the president banished slavery, that didn't stop these men from killing this former slave. If the leader of the country can't stop these kinds of people, who can?
This book wasn't all sad stories though. The story tellers also told of parties that were held on weekends. These parties weren't held by the slave masters obviously. The slaves had to sneak out of their sleeping places and travel to a larger cabin where they would dance and sing the night away. This kind of sneaking out also aided them in learning about their religion. They would sneak out to a certain place, where they would be taught about religion.
Towards the end of this book, the story tellers started talking about code names and secret things that the slaves would do in order to look out for each other. One story that goes in depth about these things is about a slave who worked his way up towards a house-slave. These slaves got to stay in the house, and more often than not, these slaves would be REALLY hated by the other slaves. Anyway, this slave, even though a house slave, didn't just betray his fellow slaves to the master. This slave self taught himself to read so that whenever the master and another helper were talking, he could understand them. You see, whenever the master and someone else were speaking, and they didn't want the house slave to [next page]