Imagine yourself a slave, confined
to the most deplorable, inhumane conditions and subject to another's every whim. You have no rights, no voice, no lawful claim
on life, and no expectations for a future.
Toiling in the field non-stop, seven days a week, with no respite from
either the blazing 120-degree sun or the skin-frosting blasts of negative-20-degree
days, your only rest is found in brief sleep on a scratchy straw bale in a
decrepit hut you call home. Occasionally, you are driven and whipped like
a horse, an iron bit in your mouth. You have had your children ripped from your
arms and sold to others; your little girl screamed and held out her arms for
you, not understanding why you did nothing to save them and certainly not
understanding the life that awaited them on another slave farm. You have seen friends, and your own parents,
hanged from tree limbs and left dangling for days to rot and stink in the sun.
If this
were – truly – your lot in life, would you risk death or torture to free
yourself? Honestly, pragmatically, to
what extent would you go to breathe freedom?
If you did win emancipation, how far would you go to avoid capture? At what cost freedom? What if your kids were facing capture and a
return to that life of utter debasement?
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