Reform Roundtable: Black Freedoms

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Personal Background:

I was born on September 27, 1785.
I died on June 28, 1830.
I was born in Wilmington, North Carolina.
My father was a slave, but my mother was a free African American.
I had been found dead at my home, some people say that I had been poisoned others say the cause of my death was tuberculosis.
I had not attended school, therefore had no education.
At an early age I taught myself how to read and write.
I am African American.
I am an Abolitionist.
In 1826 I had settled in Boston Massachusetts and there I became a writer for the first African American newspaper, the Freedom's Journal.
In the 1820's I had set up a used clothing store in Boston.
I had written and published the pamphlet Walker's Appeal, or also known as The Appeal on September 1829.

Issues:

I had grown up to despise and have much hatred for the system of slavery that the American government allowed in America.
I had been very concerned about many social issues concerning and affecting free and enslaved Africans in America.
I expressed many beliefs such as: unified struggle for resistance of oppression (slavery), land reparations, self-government for people of African descent in America, racial pride, and a critique of American capitalism.

Solutions:

I had written The Appeal to the enslaved men and women of the South advocate a black rebellion and crush slavery. I had also written the pamphlet to remind African Americans that they are all American and they should be treated fairly too. My articles called for vengeance against white men, but I also had expressed the hope that their cruel behavior toward blacks would change, and if so then having vengeance would be unnecessary. The message I was sending to the slaves was that: if liberty is not given you, rise in bloody rebellion.
My Appeal had horrified whites and slaveholders both in the North and South. In result, laws were initiated that forbade African Americans to learn how to read and had banned the distribution of antislavery literature. Louisiana executed a bill ordering expulsion of all freed slaves who had settled in the state after 1825. In addition, I was worth $3,000 if found dead and $10,000 if found alive and brought to the South.

Relationship to Others:

Nat Turner led his bloody rebellion in 1831 as a result of Walker's Appeal and had forevermore frightened the men of the South.
Most abolitionists had disagreed with my advice to the slaves because I was insisting on resorting to violence in order to obtain freedom.
William Lloyd Garrison, a white abolitionist, believed in having an immediate emancipation of slavery but thought it could be accomplished through persuasion and argument, did favor the spirit of the Appeal, however, and ran large portions of it, together with his own review, in his paper, the Liberator.

-Nuñez

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Personal Background:

I do not have an education as I was born right into the slave trade and began working on an estate owned by Dutch Settlers at a very young age. I was auctioned off when my owner died to a new owner with whom I stayed with for 17 years before I became a free women in 1827.

I was the first black women who took a white man to court in 1828 and won the rights to my son, Peter who was being sold as a slave. I was also the first african american to win a slander suit against a white man and was awarded $125.

I was a supporter of women's emancipation and lectured on women's rights and black freedom. In 1854, I gave one of my most famous speeches at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

The National Freedman's Relief Association appointed me to work as a counselor to freed slaves in Virginia. I returned to Washington within five months where I began working in a hospital. During this time I filed a suit to affirm that black people had the same legal rights as white people to ride on public transport. My court case was won

Issues:

During the civil war I spoke on the Union's behalf for the listing of black troops and eventually my grandson was enlisted

I spoke at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention where I delievered my infamous speech "Ain't I a Women". At this speech, an audience member accused me of being a man and to prove him wrong I opened my shirt.

I spoke at the Equal Rights convention in New York.
I attempted to persuade the government to give land in the "new west" to freed slaves.

My inspiration for all that I do is based on religion and what I believe is right for everyone to live together in peace and harmony.

Solutions:

I am in favor of an Utopian Community and Individual moral reform.
I wrote a book titled The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave after I learned how to read and write by myself once I became free that I encouraged many to read. It was all my ideas to an ideal community.
I changed my religion once I was free and I was enlightened

I had to fight to become free and I even ran away from my owner one year before I was legally allowed to do so.

I was constantly under estimated and unappreciated because not only was I a women, but an African American as well.

Relationship to Others:

I fought my whole life for the abolition of slavery. I also am in favor of the abolition of capital punishment.

My two main goals and most famous speeches were based on Black Freedoms, as well as Women's Rights.

I am in favor of prison reform and an utopian community where everyone, white or black, men and women, can live together in an ideal society.

Maize