Quotes About Slavery

In 1792, 300,000 people boycotted sugar from the West Indies—the greatest consumer boycott in history until that point. That year, more people signed a petition against slavery than were eligible to vote in British elections.

Numbers are difficult to calculate in part because sex workers can't be divided neatly into categories of those working voluntarily and those working involuntarily. Some commentators look at prostitutes and see only sex slaves; others see only entrepreneurs. But in reality there are some in each category and many other women who inhabit a gray zone between freedom and slavery.

The cotton gin made it possible to grow medium- and short-staple cotton commercially, which led to the spread of the cotton plantation from a small coastal area to most of the South. As cotton planting expanded, so did slavery, and slavery's becoming the central institution of the Southern economy was the central precondition of the Civil War. What

Where America was founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Sharia was founded on death, slavery, and the pursuit of power.

At the time of the Russian emancipation, about 20 percent of the Russian population lived in serfdom. In the United States at this time, about 10 percent of the population lived in slavery.

No beneficiary of slaves is supporter of birth control.

standpoint of the Constitution as it had existed until then, Lincoln's proposed order was a fundamental violation—and pointed toward a fundamental restructuring. The Constitution had been born as a compromise. That compromise had been repeatedly updated and reaffirmed until the Civil War began. As it had evolved, the compromise Constitution protected slavery in order to preserve a union capable

All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

To those who insisted that the lot of the free white laborer was worse than that of the slave, Frederick Douglass liked to point out that his old position on the plantation had been vacant since his departure, and encouraged them to apply.

The Boston Catholic Diary did not deny that slavery was unjust, but it declared "infinitely more reprehensible" the "zealots who would madly attempt to eradicate the evil by the destruction of our federal union." The "illustrious Liberator" could afix his signature to any document he pleased, but he had "no right to shackle the opinions of the Irishmen of America. . . . We can tell the abolitionists that we acknowledge no dictation from a foreign source. . . .

What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the result of increased communication, but also of an increased mastery over nature which, on a limited planet like the earth, may prove in the long run to be an increased slavery to nature.

An economy built on slave labor is vulnerable in two ways. One, availability of forced labor discourages technical innovation. The very wealthy [Roman]empire experienced no industrial revolutions. Two -- even more crucial -- slaves do not reproduce their own numbers. As Rome's wars of conquest ended, the slave population began to shrink, leading to a shortage of agricultural laborers by 200 A.D.

Slaves were never allowed to talk to white people other than their masters or someone their masters knew, as they were afraid the white man might have the slave run away. The masters aimed to keep their slaves in ignorance and the ignorant slaves were all in favor of the Rebel army. Only the more intelligent were in favor of the Union army.

Ole Massa always see that we get plenty to eat. O' course it was no fancy rations. Just corn bread, milk, fat meat, and 'lasses, but the Lord knows that was lots more than other poor niggers got. Some of them had such bad masters. Us poor niggers never allowed to learn anything. All the readin' they ever hear was when they was carried through the big Bible. The massa say that keep the slaves in they places.

I didn't have no sure 'nough weddin'. Me and Julie just jumped over de broom in front of Marster and us was married. Dat was all dere was to it. Dat was de way most of de slave folks got married dem days. Us knowed better dan to ask de gal when us wanted to get married. Us just told our Marster and he done de askin'. Den, if it was all right with de gal, Marster called all de

The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

I closed my eyes and saw the children playing their game again. 'The ease seemed so frightening.' I said. 'Now I see why.' 'What?' 'The ease. Us, the children ... I never realized how easily people could be trained to accept slavery.

in an interview Butler has stated that the meaning of the amputation is clear enough: "I couldn't really let her come all the way back. I couldn't let her return to what she was, I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole."1 Time

I wasn't trying to work out my own ancestry. I was trying to get people to feel slavery. I was trying to get across the kind of emotional and psychological stones that slavery threw at people.

My ancestors in this hemisphere were, by law, chattel slaves. In the U.S., they were chattel slaves for two and a half centuries—at least 10 generations. I used to think I knew what that meant. Now I realize that I can't begin to imagine the many terrible things that it must have done to them. How did they survive it all and keep their humanity? Certainly, they were never intended to keep it, just as we weren't.

I couldn't let her come back whole and that, I think, really symbolizes her not coming back whole. Antebellum slavery didn't leave people quite whole.

Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—the ones abolishing slavery and guaranteeing citizenship rights—still exist, but they've been so weakened by custom, by Congress and the various state legislatures, and by recent Supreme Court decisions that they don't much matter.