Slavery and Literature in the 1800s
African American slaves in the 1800s have always played an important role in the history of American society, and have helped to develop and shape United States of America to what is it today. Slaves would use narratives and speeches to share their experiences and try to make society to see and understand what the conditions that African Americans lived in were. Literature has helped to preserve the stories and narratives of African American slaves, and has helped to make individuals understand the conditions that they have to live on.
Many students taking history or literature courses such as: African American History, U.S. History, Women in America, Literature of American Slavery, and many other courses can benefit and learn from the different passages, tales and speeches given by slaves in the 19th century, that reflect the poor conditions that African Americans were sentenced to live with.
The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth’s Speech to the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 are two readings from The Norton Anthology of American Literature that talk about slavery and women in the 1800s.
Sojourmer Truth was Born into slavery in 1797. Sojourmer became one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. She spent her childhood on a New York estate owned by a Dutch-American called Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like many other slaves, she was beaten several