Slavery In The Life Of Olaudah Equiano

The slave trade removed millions of Africans from their culture, land, and society and forcibly embarked them for transport. In The Life of Olaudah Equiano, Equiano provides his readers with a description of the conditions Africans were exposed to during their transportation across the Atlantic. The “ship’s cargo were confined together” so closely that slaves hardly had space to turn and had to perform their bodily functions while chained (60). The “closeness of place,” the “heat of the climate,” and the “variety of loathsome smells” all contributed to making the air “unfit for respiration” (60). So poor were the conditions that many Africans died on the journey. Conditions in slave ships were simply abominable. Unfortunately, in the Americas conditions did not improve. The lives of enslaved Africans were dominated by work and terror. In The …show more content…
Used to justify slavery, particularly the enslavement of Africans was the bible. In Genesis, Noah curses Ham saying, “cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” This was vital to the slave trade because slavery was then considered a hereditary status that would be passed down through generations. This curse helped justify the inferiority and maltreatment of Africans. Douglass however, is certain that if the “lineal descendants of Ham are alone to be scripturally enslaved” then slavery in the south would “soon become unscriptural” (342). This would be due to the fact that thousands of children were “ushered into the world” and these children “owed their existence to white fathers” (342). Also used to justify the inferiority of Africans was their dark complexion. The physical appearance of Africans was so different from that of the Europeans, who regarded themselves as superior, that many Europeans began attributing negative characteristics to dark