Race and the American Novel Project part 1: Textual Background and Context

In Another Kidnapping 1844 by William Wells Brown, one of the main points I got out of it was how even the African Americans in the North are not safe. Men went to a northern colored family’s home at night and broke open their door. They continued to beat the man, his wife, and then kidnap his fourteen-year-old son to become a slave. When the author visits their home, the mother learns her son is gone forever and begins weeping. An African American had seen who had done it, but nothing was done about it, but African Americans could not testify against white people.

In the text he says, “they broke open the door, knocked down the man and and his wife, and beat them severely, and seized their boy, aged fourteen years, and carried him off into slavery”(442). Even safe in their home at night, they were not safe. They were free people and this text shows how just like that your freedom is gone and that even though you may live in the north, being an African American at that time, there is no place in the United States you are safe. At the end of the text he says, “What have the North to do with slavery”(442)?  The North was supposed to be the “free states”. Although they were free, they were not safe. They also could not prove who they really were once in slavery, so it would be nearly impossible to ever get out.

        I think this text helps to summarize what a lot of people don’t realize about how slavery was affecting African Americans in the north. Because they were “ free” a lot of people thought that meant that they were considered safe. I thought that myself until I see the movie “twelve years a slave”. I think it’s very barbaric of the whites in this time to be able to break open someone’s door and start beating them, kidnap someone and sell them into slavery. I can’t even imagine having my freedom taken away from me like that, knowing what your life was before and having to put that aside and take on the new identity of being a slave.

       I think this text gives insight to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I didn’t realize this while reading Uncle Tom’s cabin, but the fact that Eliza didn’t stop in the North until she reached Canada was because of the reason: no colored person was actually safe in the North. Also I wonder if any of the characters who were slaves had the experience of being taken as a free person from the North and forced into slavery. This text adds to Uncle Tom’s Cabin by showing us what actually happened in the north and how colored people were treated there.  Also, in this text when the mother screams out, “ Oh , my boy! Oh, my boy! I want to see my child!” the author goes on to say, “ I was compelled to turn aside and weep for the first time since I came into the State”. I think the tragedy we see in this text and the sadness of it gives us an idea of what Eliza’s life would have been like if she had not fled to Canada with her child.