About the Students’ Emotional
These conditions are detailed in the history of Olaudah Equiano, captured in 1756 at the age of 11. Eventually he became a slave to an Englishman, taught himself to read, bought his freedom, became an abolitionist, and Cartier Replica wrote a book—his autobiography. In it, Erika told the students, he wrote about the Middle Passage as a “long, arduous nightmare…a horrendous voyage…with inconceivable conditions in the slaves’ hold…those who managed to drown themselves were envied.” Erika’s words raised the temper of the students’ emotions.
On another site, Moira (all student names are pseudonyms) learned about Alexander Falconbridge, a surgeon who traveled aboard slave ships and later became an abolitionist. He wrote a book in 1788, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, excerpts of which appear on the site,
Traders frequently beat those Negroes…with great severity…. Instances have happened…when Negroes have been…instantly beheaded…. [T]he Negroes’ rooms soon grow intolerable hot… During the voyages I made, I was frequently witness to the fatal effects of this exclusion of fresh air…. [O]ne instance serves to convey some idea, though a very faint one, of their terrible sufferings…. [T]he floor.. .was so covered with the blood and mucus which had proceeded from them…that it resembled a slaughter house. It is not in the power of the human Cartier Replica Watches imagination to picture a situation more dreadful or disgusting.
Moira said, “I can’t read any more of this…. There were slaves on both sides of my family. My great-grandmother is still living and she told me about them. I went on the Internet and found out more. I did a project on it last year.”
The next day the class studied the short account of the Middle Passage in their text (Davidson & Stoff, 2004). It included numbers of the Africans who were captured and lived to land on this continent; the horrors lay hidden behind the figures. The authors provided no details, no images. This bland text may have aroused no emotions on its own, but the students’ emotions had reached a high that the flat text only increased.
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