Enslavement in the United States started at the beginning of colonization in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. Two hundred years later, in 1818, Fredrick Douglass was born, a black man, into slavery in Maryland. Fast forward another hundred and twenty-six years to 1944 when Leonard Peltier was born a Native American in North Dakoda. Peltier was sentenced to two life terms for the deaths of two FBI agents in 1975. These two men have different convictions of oppression from the white man during two completely different periods of history. They depict their stories in their autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, and Prison Writings, My life is My Sun Dance, respectively. By comparing both testimonies of Douglass and Peltier, the white culture took supreme superiority over different cultures causing maltreatment and false convictions in the United States. The authors make similar comments in their writings about their life before, during, and after they were suppressed by the white man, and the suffering they endured.

Douglass was born into slavery and did not know what it was like to be free. The only free society that he saw was the white man, all awhile when people of his race were enslaved all around him. He was separated from his mother when he was born and did not grow up with a parent to raise him, instead he was raised by the other African American around him (Douglass 340). He saw that the white men had the power and they were always in control of him and his people. Once he grew up and saw the terrible things that the white men did to the other slaves he knew that what was going on was not right. When he was a young boy Douglass asked his master simple information about himself and was denied it. He stated in his autobiography, “I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquires on the part of a slave improper and impertinent, and evidence of a restless spirit” (Douglass 339). Being denied simple knowledge such as how old he was at the time was one of the first times he realized how much power the white men had over him. Although this may seem miniscule, it is a fundamental part of every person’s identity and that was taken away from him by a white man, adding to the maltreatment that was from the white superiority.

Douglass continued in his writings to discuss how he suffered as a slave into his twenties when he then became a free man by escaping slavery. Douglass says, “it was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced… I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions” (Douglass 421- 422). It was not until he had escaped that he reflected on the severity of the slavery that he used to live in by writing about his experiences. By documenting his experiences that is historical evidences of how he was treated by the white man.

Leonard Peltier on the other hand, was born a free man into a Native American tribe. He was raised on a potato farm in a small cabin house with no water or electricity (Peltier 72). Even from an early age he remembered being picked on for being Native American. In his autobiography, he said, “at the age of six, I got everyone in trouble by refusing to run away when three white kids started flinging rocks at me. ‘Go on home, you dirty Indian’ they laughed, using me for what they thought was a defenseless target” (Peltier 75). The white children of the community were raised to dislike the Indians which was shown by throwing rocks and calling Peltier a dirty Indian. Later in childhood he was put into catholic school and that was his first form of imprisonment because they were forced to speak English by the white teachers and if they spoke their own language they were punished (Peltier 78). As he grew up he noticed the government’s influence on the people and how it was used to oppress his culture. These explicit actions of the white man contributed to the fate of Peltier and how he viewed the white community as a whole.

Keeping his thoughts of the white culture in mind as he continued to write, Peltier expands on how the government used their power to control the Native Americans. He noted, “the government for much of the latter half of the twentieth century had tried to get rid of us by dumping us into the multicolored racial refuse heaps of the inner cities” (Peltier 92). This was the start of many downfalls for the Native American’s. In the upcoming years, Peltier lived through the “Trail of Broken Treaties”, which was many meetings with political agendas to get the Indians under their control. Peltier went to eat with his friends during this time and while they were eating a few white men started laughing at them. When the white men, who were actually police officers, were called out they got angry and engaged the Indians in a fight. The fight escalated and ended with two FBI agent’s dead and Peltier to blame. Peltier said, “so you see, this is how it’s done. Target us, set us up, arrest us, beat the shit out of us, hang a phony rap on us, drag us off to court and jail… even if we never did a damn thing” (Peltier 105). He used that specific line to summarize his experiences with the white man and how they used supreme superiority to easily place false convictions on different cultures.

Both Douglass and Peltier duly noted how the white culture oppressed them in their lives. The purpose of their books was to disclose to their specific audiences the explicit instances that shaped their lives and the outcomes that came from their actions. Douglass used instances from his time as a slave to portray his struggles with the white man repressing him, while Peltier discussed his time in prison to show how the white culture can easily take advantage of other cultures in order to suppress them and prevail. Their testimonies show how white culture took supreme superiority over their cultures which caused maltreatment and ended in their false convictions.

Works Cited:

Gates, Henry Louis. The Classic Slave Narrative. Signet Classics, 2016

Peltier, Leonard. Prison writings my life is my sun dance. St. Martins Griffin, 1999.