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Summary Of The Hanging Of Black Man's Encounter With Liberty

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White supremacists dominate the media today in both violent protests and accusatory remarks against the African American race. Racism regarding people of African descent has existed in this nation since it first began. Though we no longer enslave Africans or force African Americans into separate establishments in society apart from whites, racism is still a serious issue in this great nation that prides itself on being free and equal. In The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah A Free Black Man’s Encounter with Liberty by J. William Harris, this theme of the white man and his contradictions regarding the law and social morals surrounding racism is ever present. In the case of Thomas Jeremiah, a free black man who owns property and slaves of his own is convicted of the crime of conspiring to begin a slave revolt against Charlestown …show more content…

Police brutality against African Americans is common on social media and many officers believed to have committed these acts walk freely with as little as a slap on the wrist so to speak. Thomas Jeremiah, was by general definition of what makes a great Englishman, on equal standings with a white man. He owned property, practiced Christian faith, and was a free man with a great reputation among white and black men alike. Yet, due to the pigmentation in his skin, any court trials in which he was convicted of a crime, he would be tried as a slave and therefore receive the most radical of punishments. The right to a trial by jury is also an American liberty this nation prides itself in. Many argued in Jeremiah’s time that rights such as the trial by jury fell to all men, black or white, while others adamantly refused that black men were considered worthy. These were only a few of the contradictions made by white men in which rights and laws were put in place, but the opposite was silently applied to the black

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Fredrick Douglass, a free slave, wrote an article about a conflict in Boston involving a runaway slave and a kidnapper. The kidnapper attempted to return the runaway slave to his master; during a scuffle, the kidnapper was killed. Douglass penned that if society has the right to preserve itself even at the expense of the life of an aggressor then it was acceptable to kill the kidnapper. Society does have the right to preserve itself even at the expense of an aggressor’s life; therefore, it was acceptable to kill the kidnapper. In Douglass’s article, his argument is formatted to suggest two premises and a conclusion that are both correct and uncontested.

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As a former slave and victim of continuous legalized discrimination, Douglass proceeds to label his selection to address the nation on Independence Day as inhuman mockery. Furthermore, Douglass declares that he cannot express felicity when the shrilling wails of his people, those bound by society’s chains, penetrate his consciousness, yet remain clouded beneath the explosion of fireworks to others. Likewise, the following paragraph of the speech defends those who society quiets, shaming the black character of America. Following the first of many indignant remarks, Douglass exercises an appeal to logic, presenting to the audience the absurd ratio of black to white men in America that face the punishment of death for crimes committed. Continuing the circular arrangement of his speech, an appeal to ethics appears through his references to the Constitution, the Bible, and God, implying that slaves, too, worship the Christian God, and thus being called upon to prove their manhood stands unreasonable.

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Many people in America take their freedoms for granted and fail to realize that some people don’t share those freedoms. Fredrick Douglass intended to remind Americans that the Fourth of July is not a day of celebration for African Americans, but a day of mourning. Douglass uses varied syntax, rhetorical questions, and appeals to emotions and logic to prove that slaves are human and that their manhood should be recognized, and to show the irony behind asking a slave to speak at a celebration of independence. Douglass uses short syntax to display the differences between himself and his audience, as well as long syntax to exaggerate the neverending struggles of African American slaves. Douglass states “I am not that man.”

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