The Only Hope of Resistance

"Dere's a Great Camp Meetin' in de Promised Land," "Look Away in de Heaven, Lord," ("Slavery Resistance" 96), controlling the animals with cruelty as a means of revenge, destroying the fields, committing suicide, dismantling the limbs from their bodies, and poisoning their masters, was the only hope of resistance for the Southern slaves in the 1800's.

Slavery has been around for centuries as a means of economic benefits; or was it a way for the slave masters to alleviate stress by beating and torturing the slaves to death? In 'Slavery Resistance' by John Hope Franklin, he makes mention of the numerous occassions when slaves were being tortured to death by their masters and how the slaves began their revolt because of this. There were instances where a slaves' body was dismantled and his parts were thrown in the fire, and there was even a time where a slave was killed by an axe by his master. The pain and anguish that was inflicted on the slaves drove them to do many absurd things which initiated their only hope of resistance.

To me, resistance may be defined as the capacity to withstand any sort of force, but I believe that to the slaves it meant FREEDOM- they were free from their masters and also free from this world. The slaves' freedom meant everything to them. The probability of this knowledge was 100 to 0, because if a female killed their offspring just so their offspring would not go through the same thing that they went through should tell you a lot about how bad things were on the plantations. Slaves went to the extreme of grinding glass and adding Arsenic Poison to their masters' provisions; they even attempted to run away- some of the slaves were successful but others were not. Although some of the slaves got caught, that still did not stop their strive for their optimism.

"Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly."

Were the words of the Late Great Reggae artist Bob Marley; this song can desperately relate to slaves because it depicts where they came from, what they have been through and where they ended. They're free at last.