The mini-series Roots, remade by the History Channel in 2016, accurately depicts the gruesome living conditions of the slaves during their time in captivity.
Slaves had many issues in their living conditions, one of them being the treatment they received from their masters. Frederick Douglass, who wrote about his slavery experience, wrote that slave owners often marred their slaves and some even took “great pleasure in whipping a slave” (Douglass 6), as shown by Douglass, who remembers his aunt whom the overseer tied up and whipped “upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood” (Douglass 6). To make it worse, Nicholas Boston from PBS claims slave beatings were regular and there was “almost daily beatings and torturing of
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Nicholas Boston, a writer for PBS on the subject of slavery and living conditions, stated that slaves were mostly underfed due to small “Weekly food rations -- usually corn-meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour” (Boston 2). These rations, however, were “ high in fat and starch” which left out key nutrients, so many slaves were subject to many “ailments, including scurvy and rickets.” (Boston 2). John Simkin, an expert on this subject, claimed some owners “gave their slaves a small piece of land” (Simkin) on which they would have to grow their own food. Douglass’s account explained how little their monthly food allowance was, being only “eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal” (Douglass 10). Some owners, like the one in Jacobs account, would force the slave to eat bad food or in Jacob’s case, dog food. When the cook did not make the dog food up to standard for Mr. Flint’s dog “He sent for the cook, and compelled her to eat it.” (Jacobs 23). The malnourishment the slaves had to suffer, which was caused by lack of food, hindered their performance which made them more susceptible to the cruel punishments covered