QuoteProject
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
Harriet Ann Jacobs
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote emphasizes the inhumanity of slavery by encouraging firsthand experience to understand its horrors.

Harriet Ann Jacobs invites the reader to confront the brutal reality of slavery by immersing themselves in the experience of a southern plantation, specifically in the role of a negro trader. This perspective aims to dismantle any illusions that may exist about the morality of slavery, forcing an acknowledgment of the dehumanization and suffering endured by enslaved individuals, thereby highlighting the deep moral implications of such an institution.

Themes

SlaveryHumanityMoralityExperienceAbomination

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in discussions about the historical impact of slavery at educational events.

More from Harriet Ann Jacobs

If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead

Similar quotes

What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.
Gustave FlaubertRead
Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen.
Heath LedgerRead
You can't be in business with international development and not understand basic issues of colonialism, postcolonialism and white privilege.
David LammyRead
Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terror; for those who thoroughly apprehend that there are no terrors for them in ceasing to live.
EpicurusRead
There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.
HomerRead
When you have told anyone you have left him a legacy, the only decent thing to do is die at once.
Samuel ButlerRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.