Revision of Week 2 Post

This week’s class meeting discussed the assigned reading Slave and Citizen written by Frank Tannenbaum. The book gave a different perspective on slavery. In early history classes, I was usually taught about American slavery and brutal things done to slaves. Slave and Citizen showed Latin American slavery to different from American slavery, in that it was more humane and slaves had rights. Slaves in Latin America could not be treated poorly because there were laws protecting them. Slaves could also buy their freedom. To this, outside of working for their owners, they could for example, use their weekends to work for another person and collect money to buy their freedom.

In class this week we watched The Trail of Tears which showed the history of the Cherokee Indians. When the white man came, the Indians were given the choice to rebel or assimilate. Many Indians fought the white man but with superior weaponry combined with the diseases brought over by the white man, many Indians tribes lost and died. The Cherokees believed they could share the land with the white man so they chose not to rebel but attempt to live peacefully with them.

However, the white man’s greed let to many coveting the luxurious homes the Cherokee owned. The Cherokee were falsely committed of crimes and removed from their homes. The white man would simple walk into the abandoned homes and called it their own. The president, Andrew Jackon, also did nothing to help the Cherokee when the Cherokee chief met with the president to plead his case. Andrew Jackson had aspirations for a political future after the presidency and to accomplish this he would need the support of white men.

The video Trail of Tears is comparable to Tannenbaum’s account of slavery in America. In class and in texts we read, if a black man was rich or in a better standing than a white man, they would usually be lynched and/or framed for a crime. In doing so, their family would be forced to leave their homes and business allowing the white man to simply walk in and declare it as their own. Slavery was a cruel and dark practice where white men could take what they wanted and do what they wanted because there were no laws protecting the rights of black men.