Blog assignement ONE: Banneker & Equiano (ENG 101)

Benjamin Banneker, who wrote a letter to former US president Thomas Jefferson,

was a former  slave.  He wrote this letter in 1791 and it became a popular letter  

thanks to its strong words, and also because Benjamin was a quite well known,

as he had studied Astronomy and also wrote an almanac. Some of his major sayings

were that all human should be treated equally as human rights are given to every

one of us by the ‘universal father’  as he created all of us equally, that at a time in his

own life Thomas Jefferson needed help, and also that Thomas Jefferson was

counteracting gods mercies by doing what he was doing.

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano  is the description of slavery

Life by Equiano after all slaves were set free  in 1830.  He had a decent part of

Childhood with his parents but was after kidnapped by slave masters.  He then lived

a miserable life, through which he was on a slave ship for some time. On that ship he

had different emotions such as fear, as he did not know what was going to happen to

on that ship, astonishment, as he was seeing and learning lots of stuff for the first

time in his life such as countries and languages and also the slaves jumping from the

ship,as they were willing to die.

All human beings are equal, but not all of them that see it through that way.  What

Equiano has witnessed on the slave ship is a proof that some people still treated

Others, mainly the black, as inferior to them.  The white people considered

themselves superior because of their skin color. They believed that the black people

had no value and should be treated just like animals. Even though people say that all

human are equal, slave masters were more interested in power and kept on ill-

treating black people.  At that time, we could say that the main reason things

weren’t changing because there was no one courageous enough to step up and set

a good example of how to treat those slaves, or also there wasn’t people who really

thought about it.

Even though all human felt the ‘same sensations’, not all of them agreed that they

were all the same, and just wanted to dominate others.  It became a habit for them,

something built inside them that made them always think that they were superior

so it was difficult to make them change their mind. But in my opinion the main

reason why slave traders couldn’t stop slavery was as I said,  because they were too

obsessed by the power they had, and also as there weren’t any person or group to

stand up against them and set an example, just like Martin Luther King or Mahatma

Ghandi did.