The voices of former slaves from an old recording

[Aseahawkfan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfcc21c6Uo

This is astounding. This is why the internet and Youtube is so amazing. It magnifies for all to hear so many pieces of history. I have read accounts, but never heard actual speakers. Give it a listen. Very interesting.

[RiverDog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfcc21c6Uo

This is astounding. This is why the internet and Youtube is so amazing. It magnifies for all to hear so many pieces of history. I have read accounts, but never heard actual speakers. Give it a listen. Very interesting.

Interesting stuff, although it wasn't a revelation, at least for me. But it was thought provoking. I love history, especially through the eyes of those that actually lived it vs. through someone's filter.

Have you ever seen the movie "Glory" with Mathew Broderick, Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman? If not, you need to watch it. I've read and watched documentaries, and they movie does a good job of depicting what was an actual event.

[Aseahawkfan]

Yep. I've seen Glory. Great movie. Mississippi Burning, Roots, Rosewood, A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom, and the like. They made a lot of those educational/historical/biographical movies when we were growing up on slavery and The Holocaust. Always shocking to me people can be so evil and overlook so much evil. It shouldn't surprise me, but it does. Why are there so many humans who seem so capable of being utterly evil and yet have the ability to suppress any regret or guilt at being so? I could never do things like this to another human. It isn't in my character. I doubt I could even be trained to it. I don't feel right treating people poorly or unfairly based on arbitrary and inconsequential factors. It seems illogical, unproductive, and destructive. I like to see people succeed. The feeling is much greater seeing others do well, especially children. You know put the world in a better place by lifting others up than tearing them down or limiting them. Life is not a zero sum game. The more people doing better leads to a better world where more people will continue to do better. I do understand they must do the things necessary to improve to build the habits for success which is why handouts are so terrible, but at the same time people should want to see other people succeed. Productive, hard working humans encouraged to succeed make for a better world.

[RiverDog]

Yep. I've seen Glory. Great movie. Mississippi Burning, Roots, Rosewood, A Dry White Season, Cry Freedom, and the like. They made a lot of those educational/historical/biographical movies when we were growing up on slavery and The Holocaust.[/i]

The problem I have with most historical movies is that they almost always have to add a fictitious event, but at least those listed above the fictitious parts didn't distract from the overall story line. I much prefer a well done documentary by a respected producer, like Ken Burns or Allister Cook. But "Glory" and "Mississippi Burning" were exceptional.

Always shocking to me people can be so evil and overlook so much evil.

I once lived next door to a WW2 veteran that was a member of Patton's 3rd Army. He was in Germany in 1945 when the Americans started liberating concentration camps and was one of the soldiers that were 'ordered' by General Eisenhower to tour the camp. Ike wanted as many people, the press, et al to see immediately before anyone could accuse them of staging the conditions or else he said that "someday someone will claim that this never happened." My neighbor said that he had heard rumors about the camps but didn't believe them, at least not to their full extent, until he toured that camp. The citizens in the surrounding villages were even worse, claimed to be unaware of what was going on just a few miles away even though they had all seen plenty of evidence. A human mind can be brainwashed into believing or rationalizing anything.

[Aseahawkfan]

I once lived next door to a WW2 veteran that was a member of Patton's 3rd Army. He was in Germany in 1945 when the Americans started liberating concentration camps and was one of the soldiers that were 'ordered' by General Eisenhower to tour the camp. Ike wanted as many people, the press, et al to see immediately before anyone could accuse them of staging the conditions or else he said that "someday someone will claim that this never happened." My neighbor said that he had heard rumors about the camps but didn't believe them, at least not to their full extent, until he toured that camp. The citizens in the surrounding villages were even worse, claimed to be unaware of what was going on just a few miles away even though they had all seen plenty of evidence. A human mind can be brainwashed into believing or rationalizing anything.

Unfortunately true. I recall when younger having to consciously avoid the brainwashing common to American society. I did not like the race paradigm in America. Not just the racism, but the entire way it is communicated and inculcated. It's a very false idea of race. I had to take time to ensure my mind did not embrace it. This idea of different humans based on skin coloration was a shallow, false belief that did not do justice to humanity and their history. I noticed in America that it was used almost solely to sow division and competition in an unhealthy way. And the liberals and Democrats seemed to be using race to sow division and fear with the sole purpose of maintaining groups of minority voters as a permanent voting victim class sold on the idea that voting for liberal Democrats will help them. Republicans seem to be sowing the idea that minorities are dangerous and the Republican Party was the party that was protecting the majority from a group of criminals and liberals trying to tear down America. Thus you have this construct of race being used in a highly unproductive manner to divide and keep each group loyal to a particular party on the basis of fear and division. When a social construct is being used in this manner, it isn't healthy or helpful for a society, especially one based on the idea of created equally and liberty.

I find it interesting that a former slave such as the man in this video knew he was born with the rights in the Constitution with a firm understanding of the natural law basis of the Constitution, while if i were to ask modern Americans if they understood the foundational ideas of the American Constitution they would fall back on some liberal garbage about oppression in an ad hominem attack on the Constitution on the basis of who wrote it rather than on the merit of the ideas therein. Yet here you have this man who lived under the brutal circumstances of slavery who understood very simply that it doesn't matter who wrote the Constitution, he was born with the rights outlined within it. He could separate what he knew to be a natural right imbued upon him by his creator versus the evil denial of these rights to men of his ancestry by the writers of the Constitution. Yet you do not see this wisdom within the modern Democratic Party. You see it more in the Republican Party, but even they don't get it as a whole. I wonder how you get that understanding back so that Americans understand they were born with the rights in the Constitution, every human alive is born with those rights. They should not be denied by any government or mob to anyone. Why did so many in this nation lose that understanding of our Constitution? Hard to tell. I guess we don't teach it properly any longer as we seem more interested in either glorifying or vilifying the men who wrote it rather than understanding the underlying philosophy and ideas that lead to its creation.

[HawkDawg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfcc21c6Uo

This is astounding. This is why the internet and Youtube is so amazing. It magnifies for all to hear so many pieces of history. I have read accounts, but never heard actual speakers. Give it a listen. Very interesting.

The sad fact is that it's still happening, today.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36416751