Thomas McKellar
This project was odd for me. Seeing images of scar tissue that covers someone’s back, and the torture devices used on another human being was a part of slavery I have never seen. As a southerner, and a descendant of slave owners, slavery has always been a minor subject to me. It was a half paragraph before the real meat of the class, the Civil War. Now, after reading Douglass’s memoirs, I see just how base and cruel the institution of slavery in America was. The recent blockbuster, Django Unchained, showed slavery as this. At the time of seeing the movie, I didn’t believe that that sort of treatment was widespread, maybe in the deep south like Alabama, but Douglass shows that it was prevalent everywhere. While there were decent owners, they did nothing to stop the absolute sadism among their peers. That cut deeply, at least to me. While Texas was not known for slavery, I still have that stigma upon my family. I know very little of that part of our family, but it still exists. It also shows how racism was such a vicious fight to me. As a Generation Y man, I did not grow up when the civil rights movement was happening. To me, before, it seemed like a fairly minor movement, trying to just get equal society for both races, which I of course thought was a noble cause. Now, I can see that that was not a minor fight, that it was every bit as hard as I had always been taught. I have a much more even keeled view of that part of America’s history because of this project.