When I Was A Slave

DIVMore than 2,000 former slaves provide first-person accounts in blunt, simple language about their lives in bondage. Illuminating, often startling information about southern life before, during, and after the Civil War. /div

Willie Lynch, a British slave owner from the West Indies, stepped onto the shores of colonial Virginia in 1712, bearing secrets that would shape the fate of generations to come. Within this manuscript, allegedly transcribed from Lynch’s speech to American slaveholders on the banks of the James River, lies a blueprint for subjugation. Lynch’s genius lay not in brute force but in psychological warfare. He understood that to break a people, one must first break their spirit. His methods—pitiless and cunning—sowed seeds of distrust, pitting slave against slave, exploiting vulnerabilities, and perpetuating a cycle of suffering. This document sheds light on the brutal realities of slavery and the ways in which its legacy continues to shape contemporary society

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Filmatized in 2013 and the official recipient of three Oscars, Solomon Northup's powerful slave narrative 'Twelve Years a Slave' depicts Nortup's life as he is sold into slavery after having spent 32 years of his life living as a free man in New York. Working as a travelling musician, Northup goes to Washington D.C, where he is kidnapped, sent to New Orleans, and sold to a planter to suffer the relentless and brutal life of a slave. After a dozen years, Northup escapes to return to his family and pulls no punches, as he describes his fate and that of so many other black people at the time. It is a harrowing but vitally important book, even today. For further reading on this subject, try 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Solomon Northup (c.1807-c.1875) was an American abolitionist and writer, best remembered for his powerful race memoir 'Twelve Years a Slave'. At the age of 32, when he was a married farmer, father-of-three, violinist and free-born man, he was kidnapped in Washington D.C and shipped to New Orleans, sold to a planter and enslaved for a dozen years. When he gained his freedom, he wrote his famous memoir and spent some years lecturing across the US,on behalf of the abolitionist movement. 'Twelve Years a Slave' was published a year after 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' by Harriet Beecher Stowe and built on the anti-slavery momentum it had developed. Northup's final years are something of a mystery, though it is thought that he struggled to cope with family life after being freed.

Find out if you experience slavery flashbacks that influence your behavior and control your thinking and learn how to recover from the post traumatic stress of slavery.

Shares the stories of Wallace Turnage and John Washington, former slaves who, in the midst of chaos during the Civil War, escaped to the North and lived to tell about their experiences.