121 Quotes About Slaves

When a man has his wages stolen from him, year after year, and the laws sanction and enforce the theft, how can he be expected to have more regard to honesty than the man who robs him?

I was too familiar with slavery not to know that promises made to slaves, though with kind intentions, and sincere at the time, depend on many contingencies for their fulfillment.

I thought I should be allowed to go to my father's house the next morning, but I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property.

Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.

Making wine and drinking wine is not new to African Americans and others in the Diaspora. South Africa has a three-century history in growing, harvesting and distilling grapes as wine. The entire continent of Africa has a history in wine-making. In this country, slaves cultivated the vineyards owned by Thomas Jefferson and other vintners.

The contents of Mr. Thorne's letter, as nearly as I can remember, were as follows: "I have seen your slave, Linda, and conversed with her. She can be taken very easily, if you manage prudently. There are enough of us here to swear to her identity as your property. I am a patriot, a lover of my country, and I do this as an act of justice to the laws.

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

A decree prohibiting the separation of Romani families through the sale of slaves was adopted in Wallachia in 1850. The ownership of private slaves finally became illegal in Moldavia in 1855 and in Wallachia in 1856.

A slave is a fallen king whose only hope to live is to one day recover his throne