Slave Voices

American slaves, despite all the horrors, were not merely defined and shaped by what others did to them. Their human spirit still prevailed, as Ira Berlin notes in Many Thousands Gone:

Slaveholders severely circumscribed the lives of enslaved people, but they never fully defined them.

The people defined themselves, as their dogged determination to escape constantly proved.

But their struggle continued:

• From trial courts where African-American slaves had not been allowed to testify in their own defense,



• To the highest court of the land where a disgraceful post-slavery decision permitted "legal" segregation and "Jim Crow" laws.



• From the words of Rosa Parks to a white man who wanted her seat on a Montgomery bus,



• To the deeds of Dorothy Height and the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. who used powerful oratory and non-violence to force long-needed changes to American law.

Today - if we listen - we can hear those long-silenced slave voices. They speak to us still, showing us what the human spirit can overcome, despite the most horrific and appalling circumstances.