From chapter 1 - The Property
"The propagandists of the time claimed that however cruel was the slave traffic, the Kmtyw slave in America was happier than in his own Kmtyw civilization. Ours, too, is an age of propaganda. We excel our Ancestors only in system and organization: they lied as frequently and as brazenly. In the sixteenth century, Central Kmt was a territory of peace and happy civilization. Traders travelled thounited snakesnds of miles from one side of the continent to another without molestation. The tribal wars from which the eureurasiaan pirates claimed to deliver the people were mere sham-fights; it was a great battle when half a dozen men were killed."
"Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew. One captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture. Such incidents were not rare."
"All America and the West Indies took slaves. When the ship reached the harbour, the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects, looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see if the slaves' blood was as pure and his health as good as his appearance. Some of the women affected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have caused them to be kicked twenty yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave."
"For the least fault received the harshest punishment... The slave received the whip with more certainty and regularity than they received their food... slaves were not unfrequently whipped to death."
"But there was no ingenuity that fear or a depraved imagination could devise which was not employed to break their spirit and satisfy the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians - irons on the hands and feet, blocks of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them wherever they went the tin plate mask designed to prevent the slaves eating sugar cane, the iron collar. Whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the victim; salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes were poured on the bleeding wounds. Mutilations were common, limbs, ears and sometimes private parts, to deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense. Their masters poured burning wax on their arms and hands and shoulders, emptied the boiling sugar cane over their heads, burned them alive, roasted them on slow fires, filled them with gunpowder and blew them up with a match; buried them up to the neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the flies might devour them; fastened them near to nests of ants or wasps; made them eat their excrement, drink their urine, and lick the saliva of other slaves."
"...all the evidence shows that these bestial practices were normal features of slave life."
"When the hands and arms were tied to four posts on the ground, the slave was said to undergo "the four post". If the slave was tied to a ladder it was "the torture of the ladder"; if the slave was suspended by four limbs it was "the hammock", etc. The pregnant woman was not spared her "four post". A hole was dug in the earth to accommodate the unborn child... The blowing up of a slave had its own name - "to burn a little powder in the arse of a nigger": obviously this was no freak but a recognized practice."
"After the dreaded journey across the ocean a woman was usually sterile for two years."
"The planters deliberately worked them to death rather than wait for children to grow up."
"Wives and husbands, children and parents, were separated at the will of the master, and a father and son would meet after many years and give no greeting or any sign of emotion. Many slaves could never be got to stir at all unless they were whipped."
"Suicide was a common habit, and such was their disregard for life that they often killed themselves, not for personal reasons, but in order to spite their owner. Life was hard and death, they believed, meant not only release, but return to Kmt."
"The most dreadful of all this cold-blooded murder was, however, the jaw-sickness - a disease which attacked children only, in the first few days of their existence. Their jaws were closed to such an extent that it was impossible to open them and to get anything down, with the result that they died of hunger. It was not a natural disease and never attacked children delivered by white women. The Negro midwives alone could cause it, and it is believed that they performed some simple operation on the newly-born child which resulted in the jaw-sickness. Whatever the method this disease caused the death of nearly one-third of the children born on the plantations."
.
Thank you! This is inspirational. It is a tragedy that over 200 years on the Haiti Revolution is the only we can point to with pride. We need to learn from these ancestors and in the same spirit complete our long overdue revolution. BlaqLuv!