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Historical Document Analysis: The Life Of Matilda Brooks

845 Words4 Pages

The historical document I choose to do an analysis over is wrote about the life of a women named Matilda Brooks. She was born a slave in either 1857 or 1858 in Edgefield, S.C. Her parents were Hawkins and Harriet Knox who were slaves to the Governor Frank Pickens. As soon as Matilda was old enough to work, she was in the fields with her parents: picking and tending to cotton, corn, potatoes, peas, and wheat. Slave owner Frank Pickens was described as a good man who treated his slaves well. This document is important for two reasons, the first reason is with Matilda’s story the reader is able to place a name to the countless stories we have all heard about in history class. Second her story doesn’t end when she gains her freedom, she continues …show more content…

At the time, this biography was written Matilda Brooks was a 79-year-old living in Monticello Florida. She was born a slave, lived to see the end of slavery and she got the chance to live out the rest of her life as a free woman. Since the document is a biography, it’s about the way she saw things as they were happening specifically to her from her point of view. That what makes this document that much more real, because it lets the audience see life through her eyes. As she describes things like her diet consisting largely of potatoes, corn bread, syrup, and occasionally meat. Along with stories about of her mother weaving clothes and how the children were allowed to play in the evenings after they were done helping in the field. These stories make this document real and relatable to someone reading about her today, making her message …show more content…

Matilda continues on telling the reader that her parents ended up getting jobs as house servants, while she got the chance to attend school. She talks about how when she started school her teachers were predominantly white, and over time that changed as more African Americans became educated. Her parent became involved in politics and churches began to open up with African American preachers. Matilda is trying to prove in her biography that her family grew from being a slave. Matilda is just one example of the thousands of slaves who were freed. I think that Matilda achieved her goal of proving how strong these former slavers will power truly was. She did this not by tell some compelling reasoning, but by simply telling her story, the

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