The painful, cutting and brilliant letters Black people wrote to their former enslavers - WAPO

[mzmolly]

... I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of fancy. You well know that I wear stripes on my back, inflicted by your direction; and that you, while we were brothers in the same church, caused this right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied to my left, and my person dragged, at the pistol’s mouth, fifteen miles, from the Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast in the market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your possession. All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders around you.

At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage. These you regard as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have been sold to human flesh-mongers, with a view to filling your own ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear sisters are. Have you sold them? or are they still in your possession? What has become of them? are they living or dead? And my dear old grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse to die in the woods — is she still alive?

More at: The Washington Post

[uponit7771]

1. K&R, ... and these are the enslavers who educated and treated slaves better than the other ...

... assholes.

People normalized the horror of slavery to the point they thought doing what was right outside of that context bought them a moral high ground.

[mzmolly]

2. Reading these excerpts, I thought about those who continue to take pride in

Confederate symbolism. I wonder what part of this horrible history, gives anyone a sense of pride.