Lovenia Chead
Chattel Slavery; Douglas pointed out that He experienced the cruelty of slavery when his own aunt was being beaten mercilessly and wonders if he will be next. As an adult he writes that he realizes that this was one of the first times he really became aware that he was enslaved and what the horrors of that position entailed. He saw the injustice and the cruelty and was forever scarred. His world-view grew at that moment as he became aware of what outrages could be perpetrated against an innocent slave. Douglas narrative as a whole, records serval brutality of slavery. Douglass's aunt was not the only slave who was beaten, and Douglass was not the only child who grew up without a mother. The Narrative captures the universality of slavery, with its vicious slaveholders and its innocent and aggrieved slaves. Slave songs gave vent to the truest expressions of the experience of slavery in antebellum America. Douglass recalls listening to them as a child and not quite understanding their depth of sorrow and meaning, but tells his readers that now he comprehends them and believes that they are able to invoke sympathy and arouse anger in their listeners. He writes that he cannot escape their mournful tones and seeks to correct the erroneous assumption of whites that slaves sang because they were happy. This could not be more incorrect, as slaves sang to express their melancholy, their impatience, their fear, their loss.
Double Consciousness: Double consciousness is a concept that Du Bois first explores in 1903 publication, “The Souls of Black Folk”. Double consciousness describes the individual sensation of feeling as though your identity is divided into several parts, making it difficult or impossible to have one unified identity. Du Bois spoke of this within the context of race relations in the United States. He asserted that since American blacks have