People's History: Slavery (Chapter 2)

Za Naroda
Amazing Grace

Summary
The ships from Africa: for centuries
they brought the slaves. Starvation and disease
and torture killed them, some would agitate,
but owners taught them to accept their fate.

Chapter
And so began the centuries
of slavery. The colonies
were pressed for labor, so the ships
from Africa made countless trips
with humans chained in airless stench
as moneyed owners chose to wrench
their lives from homes and families.
And suffocation and disease
and madness killed about a third,
and little better than a herd
of animals the others, men
and women whipped and worked again
and yet again until they broke:
plantation owners would evoke
respect by any means. But blacks
rebelled, for subjugation lacks
respect for one's humanity:
some chose to fight, and some to flee;
two-hundred years of misery
it took for the mentality
to be ingrained, the color black
depicted by a servant's shack.

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