Timeline 1 by Brenna Norrell Lyrics
The dates in this timeline reflect the publishing dates of literature that addresses, in one way or another, the mental side effects of slavery. Specifically, open discussion of how former slaves came to terms with their trauma after the fact, how they dealt with it in the moment, the larger cultural repercussions—including the possibility of genetic mutations caused by trauma, and the possibility that the perpetrators of trauma are also changed genetically and more predisposed toward violent acts. While there was no direct language for describing something like PTSD or genetic mutation at the time these works were published, I argue that the essence of these ideas is expressed by authors who talk about slaves being “cursed” and having a “soul deformity” (Wells-Barnett A Red Record). This language clearly expresses the idea that horrible events continue to shape entire groups long after they occur.
1760 – Jupiter Hammon, An Evening Thought
“We cry as Sinners to the Lord, Salvation to obtain; It is firmly fixt his holy Word, Ye shall not cry in vain. Dear Jesus unto Thee we cry, And make our Lamentation: O let our Prayers ascend on high; We felt thy Salvation. Lord turn our dark benighted Souls;… Now is the Day, excepted Time; The Day of Salvation; Increase your Faith, do not repine; Awake ye every Nation”.
1837 – Victor Sejour, The Mulatto
“’But you know, do you not, that a negro’s as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him; the laws curse him…. Yes, he’s a most unhappy being, who hasn’t even the consolation of always being virtuous…. He may be born good, noble, and generous; God may grant him a great and loyal soul; but despite all that, he often goes to his grave with bloodstained hands, and a heart hungering after yet more vengeance. For how many times has he seen the dreams of his youth destroyed? How many times has experience taught him that his good deeds count for nothing, and that he should love neither his wife nor his son; for one day the former will be seduced by the master, and his own flesh and blood will be sold and transported away despite his despair. What, then, can you expect him to become? Shall he smash his skull against the paving stones? Shall he kill his torturer? Or do you believe the human heart can find a way to bear such misfortune?’”
“’She was dead. The painful cries that escaped the orphan drew the other slaves around him…. They all set to crying, they beat their chests, they tore their hair in agony. Following these gestures of suffering, they bathed the dead woman’s body and laid it out on a kinds of long table, raised on wooden supports. The dead woman is placed on her back, her face turned to the East, dressed in her finest clothing, with her hands folded on her chest. At her feet is a bowl filled with holy water, in which a spring of jasmine is floating; and, finally, at the four corners of this funereal bead, the flames of torches rise up…. Each of them, having blessed the remains of the deceased, kneels and prays; for the most of the negro races, despite their fetishism, have profound faith in the existence of God. When this first ceremondy is finished, another one, no less singular, commences…. There are shouts, tears, songs, and then funereal dances!’”
1843 – Henry Highland Garnet, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
“Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago the first of our injured race were brought to the shores of America….But they came with broken hears, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined”.
“Your intellect has been destroyed as much as possible, and every ray of light they have attempted to shut out from your minds. The oppressors themselves have become involved in the ruin. They have become weak, sensual, and rapacious—they have cursed you—they have cursed themselves—they have cursed the earth which they have trod”.
“Inform them that all you desire is FREEDOM, and that nothing else will suffice. Do this, and forever after cease to toil for the heartless tyrants, who give you no other reward but stripes and abuse. If they then commence work of death, they, and not you will be responsible for the consequences. You had far better all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity”.
“You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this to make you subservient to its own purposes; but it has done more than this, it has prepared you for any emergency. If you receive good treatment, it is what you can hardly expect; if you meet with pain, sorrow, and even death, these are the common lot of the slaves”.
1845 – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
“[T]hey would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehensions; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest of anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me…. To those songs I race my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery”.
1852 – Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
“In those States, the bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges, except such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part nor lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic—a mere dreg in community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint rulers of our own domestic household, while the bondman’s self is claimed by another, and his relation to his family denied him. What the unfortunate classes are in Europe, such are we in the United States, which is folly to deny, insanity not to understand, blindness not to see, and surely now full time that our eyes were opened to these startling truths, which for ages have stared us full in the face. It is time that we had become politicians, we mean, to understand the political economy and domestic policy of nations; that we had become as well as moral theorists, also the practical demonstrators of equal rights and self-government. Except we do, it is idle to talk about rights, it is mere chattering for the sake of being seen and heard—like the slave, saying something because his so called ‘master’ said it, and saying just what he told him to say. Have we not now sufficient intelligence among us to determine for ourselves what is best to be done? If we have not now, we never shall have, and should at once cease prating about our equality, capacity, and all that”.
1868 – Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
“Why should my son be held in slavery? I often asked myself. He came into the world through no will of mine, and yet, God only knows how I loved him. The Anglo-Saxon blood as well as the African flowed in his veins; the two currents commingled—one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of despair. Why should not the Anglo-Saxon triumph—why should it be weighed down with the rich blood typical of the tropics? Must the life-current of one race bind the other race in chains as strong and enduring as if there had been no Anglo-Saxon taint? By the laws of God and nature, as interpreted by man, one-half of my boy was free, and why should not this fair birthright of freedom remove the curse from the other half—raise it into the bright, joyous sunshine of liberty?”
1895 – Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record
“Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of unbridled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man over the Negro, began to show itself in acts of conscienceless slavery”.
“The white man had no right to scourge the emancipated Negro, still less has he a right to kill him. But the Southern white people had been educated so long in that school of practice, in which might makes right, that they disdained to draw strict lines of action in dealing with the Negro. In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed”.
“But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is no more guilty of this vilest of all vile charges than the white man who would blacken his name”.
1905 – Sutton E. Griggs, The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist
“The whites who had been preying upon the more ignorant of the Negroes were not long in tracing this new influence to its source. It was agreed among then that the Fultons…were rather undesirable neighbors and a decision was reached to put them out of the way. The thousands of individual murders, and lynching by mobs, had so blunted the sensibility of these whites that they reached this decision without any qualms of conscience”.
“The crowd dashed wildly in the direction of the church, all being eager to get places where they could see best. The smaller boys climbed the tress so that they might see well the whole transaction. Two of the trees were decided upon for the stakes and the boys who had chosen them had to come down. Bud was tied to one tree and Foresta to the other in such a manner that they faced each other. Wood was brought and piled around them and oil was poured on very profusely. The mod decided to torture their victims before killing them and began on Foresta first. A man with a pair of scissors stepped up and cut off her hair and threw it into the crowd. There was a great scramble for bits of hair for souvenirs of the occasion. One by one her fingers were cut off and tossed into the crowd to be scrambled for. A man with a corkscrew came forward, ripped Foresta’s clothing to her waist, bored into her breast with the corkscrew and pulled forth the live quivering flesh. Poor Bud her helpless husband closed his eyes and turned away his head to avoid the terrible sight. Men gathered about him and forced his eyelids open so that he could see all. When it was thought that Forest had been tortured sufficiently, attention was turned to Bud. His fingers were cut off one by one and the corkscrew was bored into his legs and arms. A man with a club struck him over the head, crushing his skull and forcing an eyeball to hang down from the socket by a thread. A rush was made toward Bud and a man who was a little ahead of his competitors snatched the eyeball as a souvenir. After three full hours had been spent in torturing the two, the spokesman announced that they were now ready for the final act. The brother of Sidney Fletcher was called for and was given a match. He stood near his mutilated victims until the photographer present could take a picture of the scene. This being over the match was applied and the flames leaped up eagerly and encircled the writhing forms of Bud and Foresta. When the flames had done their work and had subsided, a mad rush was made for the trees which were soon denuded of bark, each member of the mob being desirous, it seemed, of carrying away something that might testify to his proximity to so great a happening”.
1760 – Jupiter Hammon, An Evening Thought
“We cry as Sinners to the Lord, Salvation to obtain; It is firmly fixt his holy Word, Ye shall not cry in vain. Dear Jesus unto Thee we cry, And make our Lamentation: O let our Prayers ascend on high; We felt thy Salvation. Lord turn our dark benighted Souls;… Now is the Day, excepted Time; The Day of Salvation; Increase your Faith, do not repine; Awake ye every Nation”.
1837 – Victor Sejour, The Mulatto
“’But you know, do you not, that a negro’s as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him; the laws curse him…. Yes, he’s a most unhappy being, who hasn’t even the consolation of always being virtuous…. He may be born good, noble, and generous; God may grant him a great and loyal soul; but despite all that, he often goes to his grave with bloodstained hands, and a heart hungering after yet more vengeance. For how many times has he seen the dreams of his youth destroyed? How many times has experience taught him that his good deeds count for nothing, and that he should love neither his wife nor his son; for one day the former will be seduced by the master, and his own flesh and blood will be sold and transported away despite his despair. What, then, can you expect him to become? Shall he smash his skull against the paving stones? Shall he kill his torturer? Or do you believe the human heart can find a way to bear such misfortune?’”
“’She was dead. The painful cries that escaped the orphan drew the other slaves around him…. They all set to crying, they beat their chests, they tore their hair in agony. Following these gestures of suffering, they bathed the dead woman’s body and laid it out on a kinds of long table, raised on wooden supports. The dead woman is placed on her back, her face turned to the East, dressed in her finest clothing, with her hands folded on her chest. At her feet is a bowl filled with holy water, in which a spring of jasmine is floating; and, finally, at the four corners of this funereal bead, the flames of torches rise up…. Each of them, having blessed the remains of the deceased, kneels and prays; for the most of the negro races, despite their fetishism, have profound faith in the existence of God. When this first ceremondy is finished, another one, no less singular, commences…. There are shouts, tears, songs, and then funereal dances!’”
1843 – Henry Highland Garnet, An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
“Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago the first of our injured race were brought to the shores of America….But they came with broken hears, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined”.
“Your intellect has been destroyed as much as possible, and every ray of light they have attempted to shut out from your minds. The oppressors themselves have become involved in the ruin. They have become weak, sensual, and rapacious—they have cursed you—they have cursed themselves—they have cursed the earth which they have trod”.
“Inform them that all you desire is FREEDOM, and that nothing else will suffice. Do this, and forever after cease to toil for the heartless tyrants, who give you no other reward but stripes and abuse. If they then commence work of death, they, and not you will be responsible for the consequences. You had far better all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity”.
“You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this to make you subservient to its own purposes; but it has done more than this, it has prepared you for any emergency. If you receive good treatment, it is what you can hardly expect; if you meet with pain, sorrow, and even death, these are the common lot of the slaves”.
1845 – Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
“[T]hey would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehensions; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest of anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me…. To those songs I race my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery”.
1852 – Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States
“In those States, the bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges, except such as he gets by mere sufferance, and so are we. They have no part nor lot in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic—a mere dreg in community, and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the enslaved? none, neither are we superior in any other relation to society, except that we are defacto masters of ourselves and joint rulers of our own domestic household, while the bondman’s self is claimed by another, and his relation to his family denied him. What the unfortunate classes are in Europe, such are we in the United States, which is folly to deny, insanity not to understand, blindness not to see, and surely now full time that our eyes were opened to these startling truths, which for ages have stared us full in the face. It is time that we had become politicians, we mean, to understand the political economy and domestic policy of nations; that we had become as well as moral theorists, also the practical demonstrators of equal rights and self-government. Except we do, it is idle to talk about rights, it is mere chattering for the sake of being seen and heard—like the slave, saying something because his so called ‘master’ said it, and saying just what he told him to say. Have we not now sufficient intelligence among us to determine for ourselves what is best to be done? If we have not now, we never shall have, and should at once cease prating about our equality, capacity, and all that”.
1868 – Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
“Why should my son be held in slavery? I often asked myself. He came into the world through no will of mine, and yet, God only knows how I loved him. The Anglo-Saxon blood as well as the African flowed in his veins; the two currents commingled—one singing of freedom, the other silent and sullen with generations of despair. Why should not the Anglo-Saxon triumph—why should it be weighed down with the rich blood typical of the tropics? Must the life-current of one race bind the other race in chains as strong and enduring as if there had been no Anglo-Saxon taint? By the laws of God and nature, as interpreted by man, one-half of my boy was free, and why should not this fair birthright of freedom remove the curse from the other half—raise it into the bright, joyous sunshine of liberty?”
1895 – Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record
“Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of unbridled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man over the Negro, began to show itself in acts of conscienceless slavery”.
“The white man had no right to scourge the emancipated Negro, still less has he a right to kill him. But the Southern white people had been educated so long in that school of practice, in which might makes right, that they disdained to draw strict lines of action in dealing with the Negro. In slave times the Negro was kept subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of scourging, but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed”.
“But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is no more guilty of this vilest of all vile charges than the white man who would blacken his name”.
1905 – Sutton E. Griggs, The Hindered Hand; or, The Reign of the Repressionist
“The whites who had been preying upon the more ignorant of the Negroes were not long in tracing this new influence to its source. It was agreed among then that the Fultons…were rather undesirable neighbors and a decision was reached to put them out of the way. The thousands of individual murders, and lynching by mobs, had so blunted the sensibility of these whites that they reached this decision without any qualms of conscience”.
“The crowd dashed wildly in the direction of the church, all being eager to get places where they could see best. The smaller boys climbed the tress so that they might see well the whole transaction. Two of the trees were decided upon for the stakes and the boys who had chosen them had to come down. Bud was tied to one tree and Foresta to the other in such a manner that they faced each other. Wood was brought and piled around them and oil was poured on very profusely. The mod decided to torture their victims before killing them and began on Foresta first. A man with a pair of scissors stepped up and cut off her hair and threw it into the crowd. There was a great scramble for bits of hair for souvenirs of the occasion. One by one her fingers were cut off and tossed into the crowd to be scrambled for. A man with a corkscrew came forward, ripped Foresta’s clothing to her waist, bored into her breast with the corkscrew and pulled forth the live quivering flesh. Poor Bud her helpless husband closed his eyes and turned away his head to avoid the terrible sight. Men gathered about him and forced his eyelids open so that he could see all. When it was thought that Forest had been tortured sufficiently, attention was turned to Bud. His fingers were cut off one by one and the corkscrew was bored into his legs and arms. A man with a club struck him over the head, crushing his skull and forcing an eyeball to hang down from the socket by a thread. A rush was made toward Bud and a man who was a little ahead of his competitors snatched the eyeball as a souvenir. After three full hours had been spent in torturing the two, the spokesman announced that they were now ready for the final act. The brother of Sidney Fletcher was called for and was given a match. He stood near his mutilated victims until the photographer present could take a picture of the scene. This being over the match was applied and the flames leaped up eagerly and encircled the writhing forms of Bud and Foresta. When the flames had done their work and had subsided, a mad rush was made for the trees which were soon denuded of bark, each member of the mob being desirous, it seemed, of carrying away something that might testify to his proximity to so great a happening”.