Understand and evaluate U.S. history from multiple vantage points, by taking into account the experiences of those with varied access to positions of economic, social, and political power.
https://www.americanyawp.com/ (This is the book that we use in the class, reference from this book)
In this essay, you can use the two “slave narratives” (as the genre is called) we read to consider aspects of slavery as slaves and whites had to live, and try to survive, it. In this way, these provide a starting place for choosing your topic/s for the essay about slavery. You will analyze your topic using additional primary sources (from those assigned in the class) and will include, as one primary source, one of these narratives (or even better, both –if it meets criterion that follows); what is central is how the primary sources relate to the topics you pick to analyze. American Yawp and the class material provide context; as you analyze your preferred topics from among the many possible from Douglass’s or Jacobs’s books, you will bring your analytical skills to bear on the material.
Remember: you need to provide a citation wherever you include information from another source (not only with quotations [see below, about writing requirements]).
Your essay will focus on:
1) An examination of themes about slavery and the slavery experience, using the book as one primary source – in other words, explaining how this and other relevant primary sources help you understand people’s lives under and experiences within the institution of slavery.
Another way to think about this: what do you learn about slavery from the experience of our various primary source authors (the narratives’ authors, primary source authors)? Remember, the slave narratives are two things: each narrating part of their experience of slavery for their own reasons in their own lives, and us using their lives and experiences as a primary source to reflect on slavery more generally (what we do with it).
Douglass and Jacobs relate their own experiences: they do not encapsulate the whole slave experience. Having them paired makes this even more clear: their narratives are quite different in their specifics
As you begin to construct your essay, avoid this common error that often causes authors trouble: do not follow the chronology of the lives of these narratives/authors: follow the logic of your chosen topics.
The following are only examples to start your thinking of themes that you want to examine, as these autobiographies provide you some information. These are only suggestions to help you begin to pick themes you will analyze; you certainly are free to pick other topics (not mentioned) to analyze, to choose among these, and to focus on one or more. (Focusing on two can work; analyzing more than two likely means, in this short an essay, that you are not fully examining them. (Be sure to use specific examples from his book and other relevant primary sources.)
Think about the geographic region each describes: the type of work they do and the uses to which their labor is put, how this compares to the work other slaves, and the extent and type of contact each has with whites. What different experiences with whites do you find in these books? What motivates various whites? What views of/ideologies about slavery do you learn from these books? What do the books tell you about slavery and the life cycle of slaves – how do the life experiences of slaves differ depending on their age? What happens in each of their lives as they age within the slave system? What about the lives of their family members? What differentiates life for slaves depending on where they live (in the country compared to slaves in cities, for example)?
(Remember: being in “cities” is not being in “the North” – this is a mistake that has been commonly made in the past.) Douglass, for example, writes about Baltimore, Maryland: a southern city.
What impressions do they give you as they describe the daily life of slaves in various settings? What methods of control do owners resort to? What ways do slaves resist?
What role do free blacks play in the book? What restrictions do they face?
[As with all of our sources, so with these books: you must consider the book’s author, audience, purpose, and how it related to the period in which it was published.]
