The physical harms of slavery are well documented. Although the christian and muslim crusades, Spanish Inquisitions, and Arab slave trades produced harms to our people as well, this writing will focus on some of the harms associated with The Atlantic Slave Trade and in what would become the United States and its territories. The primary victims of the slave trade were our children. When there were no more children that they could send from the portuguese plantations in Africa, they would conspire and contract to have our children kidnapped from their homes. Sometimes, they would pretend to 'befriend' us and secretly kidnap children after gaining local trust. There is even a letter preserved from antiquity where a King wrote them about this very issue. He stated that his citizens were complaining that their children were coming up missing. At that time, no one knew the extent of the atrocities that would be faced by our missing children and the heartache to our parents as a nightmare became reality in knowing that they may never see their children again. The children or other captives would sometimes have to make that grueling trek to enslaving posts. Food and water for them was scarce or non at all and some would die on the way due to starvation, dehydration, or exhaustion. Some would be killed for various reasons including attempted escape. Some were able to get away and tell others about what was going on. It is important to note that throughout our history with this atrocity our people always fought back and resisted in whichever way that they could - even to this day. The people were chained one to another, much like it is today with United States jails and prison houses. On the trip and on the ship, disease would break out as our people were packed so closely together with no where to go that it was more than impossible to practice 'social distancing'. There was no separation for menstruation periods. Fecal matter and urine would be mixed in with the captives. Sometimes one would die next to another and the decomposing body would not be removed for days. On the ships, some would be thrown overboard to drown or be eaten by sharks. Others chose to take their own lives rather than subject themselves to the horrors being committed by this enemy. Yet, there were cases where enough of our boys and men were able to take control of the ship and steer to freedom. Even still, throughout the journey, from west and central Africa, to the ships crossing the Atlantic ocean, and in the Americas, our women, girls, and boys were raped by their captives. Some of our men were also held down and raped in order to bring them shame and lower that status to the rest of our people. This process was given a term by the southern enslavers. It was called 'buck breaking'. As punishment, our people could be whipped. This process was known to have left a tree of scars on the backs of the individuals who suffered this harm. Sometimes, body limbs were cut off as a form of punishment. In Florida, our babies were sometimes killed and used as 'gator bait'. And as if splitting our families apart and taking our children literally half-way around the world never to see their homes nor their families ever again was not enough, the splitting of families continued while enslaved in the Americas. Children would be sold to plantations, taking them away from their parents. Fathers would be sold too, never to see their children again. If two of our people became married, the enslaver would intentionally rape the woman. The selling process was cruel too. We would be checked out and looked over as if we were livestock and they did indeed treat us as if we were livestock. And the food diet that was given to us while enslaved was a diet our ancestors did not eat. As a result, many of our people suffer from diet related illnesses even to this day. The first sale on wall street was a sell of slaves. The second was pork bellies because that is what they fed us - pork. Our ancestors did not eat anything that would be considered a bottom feeder or eater of other animals because it increases the chance of disease being introduced to the body. Our ancestors did not eat it. It was forced upon us. Some people again chose starvation to the diet that would kill them anyway. Even after the purported end of chattel slavery, the horrors continued. The terrorism and killings did not stop. They began to perform what would be called lynchings. In a lynching, one or more of our people would be captured, tortured, sometimes burned or boiled alive, dragged by horses, even drug by 4 horses, one to each limb, in seperate directions as to tear the body in fourths, or otherwise killed or hung on trees by creating a noose and putting it around the person's neck. The hanging by noose on a tree would be called strange fruit, as a person hanging from a tree is not natural and sometimes the pressure on the neck would cause the person's eyes to buldge out of their sockets or tongue out of the mouth. The culprits would take pictures of the event and circulate them amongst each other, privately, and openly in newspapers. Sometimes all of the above or a combination thereof would be committed at these lynchings. There are even accounts of unborn fetuses being cut out of a woman's stomach while she hanged from a tree and then the baby would be stomped to death. Rest in Peace Mary Turner and her unborn child. Yet, to this day, these events continue in some form or another. Our families still have the split parents issues, with salt on the wound by the United States Governments and their unconstitutional child support laws that make criminals out of young fathers, dsyfunctional homes for children, and deep animosity between former lovers that almost never heals. Many cannot give up eating pork, shellfish, and catfish because that is what they were raised on, and so many continue to suffer from Type II Diabetes and other ailments as a result. As with the Slave Patrol, its subsidiary, the Police Patrol, continues to terrorize and kill our people to this day. An adverse number of people in general, and men in particular, are hid away in their prison houses as property of the state where slavery is still legal. Additionally, the emotional scars produced then and now may be visibly seen on our people. It is time for reparations for slavery.
