Hossain

Slaves had always been the occluded, second-class citizens that had
lived in the shadows. It was not until the Anti-slavery movement (started in
the late 1830s) when slaves across the country discovered a voice to speak
out against the white-supremacist society. Before and during the Anti-slavery
movement, whites often referred slaves to objects, and creatures ignoring
the fact that slaves are just as human as the freed ones. However, abiding
the [white supremacist] societys laws was a must for them. Although its the
commitment to the society to abide all the laws, since the society is the
product of individuals, the power that the society has in its hold isnt
absolute; a greater individual resistance has the ability to break through the
societys norms.
Oppression of the black minority during nineteen century in the United
States was one of the major issues that differed northern states from the
southern ones. There are no apparent laws that prohibit or limit opportunities
for blacks in our society today, yet there is a sense that all things are not fair
and equal. Some practiced passive resistance, some fought against the
horrible odds of the society. Quite a few individuals are in the book of the
history because of their ability to overcome the oppression and succeed.
Frederic Douglass is one of the abolitionists, and he was able to recreate the
barbaric phenomenon through his autobiographical slave narrative, My
Bondage and My Freedom. "Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was
broken in body, soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my
intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that

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lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and
behold a man transformed into a brute!" (Douglass 133). At Covey's farm he
had neither; here he experienced his lowest, basest, most dehumanizing
experience within a lifetime of slavery. He was beaten, on a regular basis,
until his vein started bleeding. Coveys inhumanity brought Douglasss will to
a stop. He was thus quite successful as a breaker of slaves, at least until
Douglass finally fought back. This time remains one of the darkest moments
in Douglass's life.

The slaves in his time were kept in ignorance from their birth (e.g.
Douglass himself never knew his own age). As he grew up he figured out that
he was none but a slave, thats when he started to realize the need for his
[groups] freedom. He learns that perseverance is the key to ones freedom.
Douglass eventually finds the strength to resist Covey and succeed in
asserting his manhood. In his childhood, he lamented how learning only
made him more miserable, especially during periods where he had some
sense of freedom and leisure. He finds out that knowledge brings freedom.
Only if the slaves knew how to read and write, they would recognize the
inequality they have in the society and be able to let the rage grow in them
to fight back. I devoted three evenings a week to my fellow slaves, during
the winter. I felt a delight in circumventing the tyrants, and in blessing the
victims of their curses." (Douglass 163). Douglass finds the happiness in

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educating others and let them know their position in the society. Selfeducating himself brought the gun to him but the sense of educating others
surrounding him brought the bullets, combination of both encouraged them
to start fight for their denounced freedom. His retained hopes and his
irresistible response to his hopes explain how an entire race was able to
strike back and retain dreg of their dignity and survive.
Douglass states that the idea of giving birth to a sense of own freedom
in the slaves were actually from the plantation masters. To enslave men,
successfully and safely, it is necessary to have their minds occupied with
thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they are deprived. A
certain degree of attainable good must be kept before them. (Douglass
154). The masters used to free their slaves once in a year (the Christmas
Day) and encouraged them to drink the whole day. They had done such thing
in a purpose of not letting their slaves realize that they were completely
were out of their own correspondence, that they were only a property.
Douglass argues otherwise; such activity of giving slaves a leisure for a day
in a year gave rise to a union of the slaves [which Douglass used to arrange]
which they usually were not allowed to have.
While Douglass focuses on the types of relation between the slaves (in
general) and the slave-owners, keeping the same focus, but narrowing it
down to only relationship between black and white women in traditional
plantation households in the American South, Thavolia Glymph portrays a

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third person perspective of slavery within the women slaves unlike Douglass
piece in which he portrayed the entire slavery era in a first person
perspective. Yet in the slavery era, as Glymph argues, the fight between the
white slaveholders and slave women had always been disregarded by the
scholars. Women had to deal with their mistresses more than they had to
fight with their masters; yet the historians referred that women [were]
"suffering under the weight of the same patriarchal authority to which slaves
were subjected." (Glymph 23). The impaired view, on the gender role, of the
society is yet again reflected while portraying the barbarity of the slavery;
historians mostly relied on the one sided view of the slavery in which they
mostly talk about the inhumane slave-master relationship, where they should
emphasize the same view on slave (most necessarily women) mistress
relationship. She argues that the punishment of the slaves by their
mistresses were much more crucial than that of the slaves by their master.
"..Mistresses' violence against slaves provides a useful lens through which to
examine their feelings about slaveholdingphysical punishment seems to
have occurred much more frequently between mistresses and slaves than
between masters and slaves. (Glymph 35-36).
Though she keeps the negative relation of white women to black
women as her central view within the first few chapters (as were told to read
only first three chapters), she also emphasizes that not all the mistresses
had used violence against the slaves. The good mistresses dedicated her
life to the never-ending task of managing her household, and caring for her

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family and slaves in sickness and in health (Glymph 19). The sympathy
(although the use of this word may sound odd while speaking of a minority, it
was technically a form of sympathy) of such mistresses had placed a sense
of their own liberty in the slaves minds.
Douglass used his first person perspective to evaluate his own life
(which arguably represents every slaves life) in his narrative in which he
mostly relied on men slaves although he brought his mother and his
grandmother at times; whereas Glymph, in her literature piece, emphasized
the relationship between the black women and white women. They both
expressed the barbarity, and the inhumanity of the slavery in the same lens
but in different tone. They both state that the masters and the mistresses are
the reason for what the slaves had gained their sense of their own liberty
from.
After all, even though being slaves was the slaves determined stand in
the society and to obey the societys laws, what they mustve followed, what
they mustve ignored, are all dependent on expressing their own sense of
liberty. The society is the product of individuals; hence, the power that the
society has in its hold isnt absolute, a greater individual resistance has the
ability to break through the societys norms. Frederick Douglass and Thavolia
Glymph expressed a thorough view of the slaves in which their inner-will, to
liberate their own selves, was greater than the absolute punishments of the
slave-holders which resulted into a complete [though it seems pretty

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incomplete until now, for the sake of the history, Im using the word
complete] defeat of the white supremacist society and gave birth to a new
era of all men [irony still remains on the gender role] are created equal.

Works Cited
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Dover
Publications, 1969. Print.

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Glymph, Thavolia. Out of the House of Bondage. Cambridge ; New York :

Cambridge University

Press, 2008. Print.