Read the following excerpt from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s autobiographical nonfiction book Between the World and Me (2015), in which Coates, a Black American, writes a letter to his young son:
“Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh. It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, thinks her sister talks too loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dress-making and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and capable as anyone. “Slavery” is the same woman born in a world that loudly claims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. She can hope for more. She can imagine some future for her grandchildren. But when she dies, the world—which is really the only world she can ever know—ends. For this woman, enslavement is not a parable1. It is a damnation. It is the never-ending night. And the length of that night is most of our history. Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free2.”
1Parable - A fictitious story with a moral or spiritual lesson
2When the first group of enslaved Africans were brought to English colonies → 1619
Juneteenth (when the last officially enslaved people were emancipated) → 1865
246 years of legalized slavery in America
155 years since slavery ended in America
Next, respond to at least one of the following questions:
● What did you find striking and/or surprising about this excerpt?
● What is Coates’s purpose in writing this part?
Part 2: Review rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, & logos
Reviewing rhetorical strategies:
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion; in other words, it’s the study of how we debate and convince people to believe something. Ethos, pathos, and logos are the terms coined by Aristotle as the foundations of rhetoric, and they are called rhetorical appeals.
Ethos — Establishing your authority & credibility to speak on and/or argue a certain subject.
Watch this commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ULR68LTmbw)
and explain how it is an example of ethos in the box on the right.
Pathos — Appealing to audience’s emotions by evoking strong feelings.
Watch this commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6bLugtJkQ)
and explain how it is an example of pathos in the box on the right.
Logos — Reasoning by appealing to the audience’s rationality and logic.
Watch this commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtaZ_GA7ys0)
and explain how it is an example of logos in the box on the right.
Part 3: Frederick Douglass Introductions
Please watch this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl0gm8CHOl8) as a brief introduction to Frederick Douglass. (Out of all the brief introductory videos I’ve searched through, this was one of the best!)
What are two facts about Douglass that you found most impressive?
Part 4: Before we read Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical personal narrative…
Frederick Douglass writes his personal narrative about the atrocities of what it was like to be enslaved.
- Why do you think he chose to write about his experience; what do you think was his purpose?
- Who do you think was the intended audience of his autobiography?
Vocabulary Terms:
● Humanize/humanization — To make someone’s humanity clearer; to see someone as a full, complex human being
● Dehumanize/dehumanization — To deprive someone of human traits; to treat someone as less than human
● Seldom — Rarely, infrequently
● Inquiry/To inquire — Question(s); to ask
● Mulatto — Someone with a mixed-race ancestry that includes white European and Black African roots. [THIS PHRASE IS NO LONGER POLITICALLY CORRECT/SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE; DO NOT USE]
● Overseer — Employed by the plantation owner, the overseer was also responsible for “supervising” the enslaved people
Part 5: Reading Chapter 1 of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Quickwrite/Reflect:
What does your birthday mean to you? Why do you think birthdays are so important and celebrated by society?
As you read through chapter 1, annotate for rhetorical appeals, themes/central ideas, and moments that struck you. Also, respond to the questions in each chunked section.
I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvest-time, cherry-time, spring-time, or fall-time. A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquiries of my master concerning it. He deemed all such inquiries on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old.
1. Why do you think enslavers refused to tell the enslaved people their birthdays?
- What rhetorical appeal do you see present here? Paraphrase where it is.
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather. My father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant—before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result. I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was very short in duration, and at night. She was hired by a Mr. Stewart, who lived about twelve miles from my home. She made her journeys to see me in the night, travelling the whole distance on foot, after the performance of her day's work. She was a field hand, and a whipping is the penalty of not being in the field at sunrise, unless a slave has special permission from his or her master to the contrary—a permission which they seldom get, and one that gives to him that gives it the proud name of being a kind master. I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering. She died when I was about seven years old, on one of my master's farms, near Lee's Mill. I was not allowed to be present during her illness, at her death, or burial. She was gone long before I knew any thing about it. Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of her death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger. 3. How is the treatment of enslaved mothers and their babies an act of dehumanization? - Why would enslavers want to “blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child”?
- Summarize what Douglass’s mother did for him before she passed away. Called thus suddenly away, she left me without the slightest intimation of who my father was. The whisper that my master was my father, may or may not be true; and, true or false, it is of but little consequence to my purpose whilst the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that slaveholders have ordained, and by law established1, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father. I know of such cases; and it is worthy of remark that such slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others. They are, in the first place, a constant offence to their mistress. She is ever disposed to find fault with them; they can seldom do any thing to please her; she is never better pleased than when she sees them under the lash, especially when she suspects her husband of showing to his mulatto children favors which he withholds from his black slaves. The master is frequently compelled to sell this class of his slaves, out of deference to the feelings of his white wife; and, cruel as the deed may strike any one to be, for a man to sell his own children to human flesh-mongers, it is often the dictate of humanity for him to do so; for, unless he does this, he must not only whip them himself, but must stand by and see one white son tie up his brother, of but few shades darker complexion than himself, and ply the gory lash to his naked back; and if he lisp one word of disapproval, it is set down to his parental partiality [favoritism], and only makes a bad matter worse, both for himself and the slave whom he would protect and defend. 1Partus sequitur ventrem (“That which is brought forth follows the belly”) is the legal doctrine passed in 1662 in Virginia, in which children of enslaved women were born into slavery. Chattel slavery is when an enslaved person is owned forever and whose children and children's children are automatically enslaved
- Why do the slaves who are also the illegitimate children of the slaveholder suffer more than other slaves?
- In what way does Douglass humanize the “master and father” in this excerpt? What is his purpose?
- What is Douglass conveying about the effects of slavery here? Every year brings with it multitudes of this class of slaves. It was doubtless in consequence of a knowledge of this fact, that one great statesman of the south predicted the downfall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population. Whether this prophecy is ever fulfilled or not, it is nevertheless plain that a very different-looking class of people are springing up at the south, and are now held in slavery, from those originally brought to this country from Africa; and if their increase do no other good, it will do away the force of the argument, that God cursed Ham2, and therefore American slavery is right. If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that slavery at the south must soon become unscriptural; for thousands are ushered into the world, annually, who, like myself, owe their existence to white fathers, and those fathers most frequently their own masters. 2In the Bible, Ham and his descendents are Black, and since God cursed Ham’s son to be enslaved in Genesis 9:20-27, people often use that Bible verse to justify enslaving people of African descent.
- How does Douglass use logos to argue the Bible passage will eventually no longer work to justify the enslavement of so many people? I have had two masters. My first master's name was Anthony. I do not remember his first name. He was generally called Captain Anthony—a title which, I presume, he acquired by sailing a craft on the Chesapeake Bay. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer's name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women's heads so horribly, that even master would be enraged at his cruelty, and would threaten to whip him if he did not mind himself. Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him. He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood-clotted cowskin. I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing. It was the first of a long series of such outrages, of which I was doomed to be a witness and a participant. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it. 10. What kind of overseer is Mr. Plummer?
- In what way does Douglass’s enslaver, Captain Anthony, show Douglass “the bloodstained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery”? This occurrence took place very soon after I went to live with my old master, and under the following circumstances. Aunt Hester went out one night,—where or for what I do not know,—and happened to be absent when my master desired her presence. He had ordered her not to go out evenings, and warned her that she must never let him catch her in company with a young man, who was paying attention to her belonging to Colonel Lloyd. The young man's name was Ned Roberts, generally called Lloyd's Ned. Why master was so careful of her, may be safely left to conjecture. She was a woman of noble form, and of graceful proportions, having very few equals, and fewer superiors, in personal appearance, among the colored or white women of our neighborhood. Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found in company with Lloyd's Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d——d b—-h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, "Now, you d——d b—-h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!" and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation. 12. What is the reason why Captain Anthony is did not want Aunt Hester to be around Lloyd’s Ned? (What does Douglass imply?)
- Which excerpt from this section was the strongest example of pathos? Copy and paste it, making sure to quote and cite.
Ultimately, what rhetorical appeal did you find most present? What is one example? What was the purpose of using rhetorical appeal?