LEARNING TOGETHER: The Story of America
In the 1800s, slave owners were baffled by slaves running away from the plantations. Seeking answers, slave holders turned to science. A southern doctor offered the perfect solution. He believed that the desire for freedom was a mental condition called drapetomania.
This psychological disorder caused African/Negro slaves to wander off the plantation or escape from their slave owners. The thought was that a slave’s life was so wonderful that he/she had to be insane to yearn for freedom. Drapetomania apparently only occurred in Black slaves. The treatment for drapetomania was to withhold food, whip (aka whipping the devil out of the slave) and if that didn’t work the slave master could always amputate the toes of the freedom seeker.
This so-called disease of the mind was part of the happy slave myth. The lie that if you fed slaves, clothe them, and tried not to beat them too much, they’d want to be your slave for life…and their kids too. Drapetominia was just another way to justify slavery, like using the Christian Bible to tell slaves that God wanted them to be slaves. And that if they happily served their masters on earth, they would be rewarded with a place in heaven.
No one wants to be a slave. The desire for freedom is normal in all races, Black/African people are no exception.
Black people fought for their freedom from slavery before they arrived on American shores or any shores for that matter. They fought for their freedom in Africa, on the slave ships, the auction blocks, the plantations and in the court system that kept them in bondage for generations.
Drapetomania is (a racist) pseudo-science that I would like to believe is in our past, but when others legally have a right to determine what you can do with your body and think that there’s something wrong with you if you don’t want them to control your body, then what is the difference between you seeking freedom to control your body and the runaway slave seeking freedom to control his/her body?
Slavery is the control over someone else’s body. Drapetomania is a made-up medical ailment to ease the conscious of slaveowners, racists and oppressors. It is normal and healthy for people to desire the freedom from enslavement and the freedom to control their own destiny (body, mind, and soul).
Noteworthy Fact(s):
Drapetomania also applied if a slave intentionally destroyed the master’s home, farm animals, equipment, etc. or encouraged other slaves to run away or stirred up trouble for the slave master. Which would mean that Harriet Tubman (conductor in the Underground Railroad), Frederick Douglass (spoke on the evils of slavery), Sojourner Truth (freed her son from slavery), Nat Turner (who said he was led by God to seek his freedom and the freedom of others), Henry Bibb (who ran away repeatedly) etc. all suffered from drapetomania.
OUR HISTORY MATTERS
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