Harriet Ann Jacobs was an American Writer who once served as a slave. She escaped from slavery and became a reformer and a speaker whose works were characterized by slavery eradication. In her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave girl, which is from a real life experience, was one of the first autobiographical narratives about freedom struggle. It had an account of sexual harassment and several types of abuses that slaves endure. Anne Frank’s narrative is a well organized accurate diary which about the hardships endured by slaves in the hands of Nazi forces. The narratives are similar in a number of ways.
They are both written by females and they cover similar topics about slavery and how slaves are treated by the security organs in place. The areas covered in the narratives are inclined towards the female gender which is the most vulnerable. Both of them takes into account what is involved during an escape from slavery, challenges met and the impacts it has to an individual’s life. Both works are not fictional and their findings are very accurate as there is a direct interaction with a person who experienced that kind of life.
Gradual emancipation and colonization were viable means to end slavery even though to some extent colonization propagated it at some point. Emancipation contributed a lot to the end of slavery. This was evident when Abraham Lincoln gave an executive order which saw the release of 3.1 million slaves. Colonization also contributed a lot to the freeing of many slaves. However, colonialists used the slaves to get cheap labor but later on, the colonialists retracted and freed the slaves and brought this act to an end. Even though, Abraham Lincoln’s executive order was not implemented immediately it helped free many slaves from various prisons in the United States. Such kinds of emancipation has been practiced by different leaders in the world to free slaves in their territories.
Domestic slavery has been denied to be existent in America for a very long period of time. It has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there is domestic slavery in America. Some may view it as a norm but in real sense it is domestic slavery. Children are taken to work for their relatives under threat of violence for no pay. Research has proved that there are about 50,000 slaves who are held in the United States. Poor and orphaned children are taken by their relatives to stay with them and without knowing the intent of the offer, they (children) accepts without any form of objection. Before it is long they plunge into this form of slavery.
They work for no pay and whenever they fail to do the assigned chores, they are beaten up and sometimes denied food. It is very ironical that the United States which has been on the fore front to fight cases of slavery is the main home of slaves. Slaves are found world wide and the number tends to increase on a daily basis with the United States leading. Domestic Slaves are very difficult to discover and the slaves themselves are not willing to become free. They opt to staying in those homes for as long as they live unless there is an external intervention.
Work Cited List
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First two Centiries of Slavery in North America. 1999
Hogendorn, Jan and Johnson Marion. The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. Cambridge, 1986
Rigas Doganis, Gad Heuman. (ed). The Slavery Reader. 2003
