Mencia Barnuevo
Race & the Photographic Image
05/10/2016
The start of lynching as a recreational phenomenon has quite a few potential origins, but it appears to be chiefly affiliated to the policies of equity in the late 1800’s up until the mid 1900’s. Despite the “birthplace” of lynching, these vicious procedures undergone by the African Americans from the whites, were violations to their human rights. However, these tormenting, maiming, lynchings were jubilant presentations for white people, frequently with white adolescents too, observing and enjoying by their parents side. These “spectacles,” among with the act of slavery, soon became common, insinuating the great extent of dehumanisation at the time. The origin of this brutality, as
…show more content…
On one hand, the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is a narrative of a slave attempting to become free. On the other hand, it is a narrative of how African Americans are mentally and physically turned into slaves—moreover how white men manifest their superiority. Firstly, Frederick was separated from his mother as a young child, leaving no time for the two to build a relationship; “I received the tidings of my mother’s death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger” (Douglass, 6). Secondly, Edward Covey, one of Fredericks slaveholders, strategies in establishing his dominance was through making him work relentlessly and punishing him when he felt necessary—which almost never was necessary. Frederick understands how slaveholders can make their slaves feel inferior and degrade them through physical power however is intrigued with the idea of how slaveholders dominate their slaves minds. Hale similarly explains how slaveholders would do all in their power to keep their slaves from being educated so they could not in a sense humanise themselves and become enlightened. Correspondingly, Frederick narrates that he soon began to become deprived of implacable parts of himself, such as his light heartedness and his determination to read and write. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (Douglass, 10.5). Frederick had officially hit rock bottom, his mind was now his