Rashanti+Riser

=Name: Carlitha Mae Ella Hopkins= I am a seventeen year old slave and live in Charleston, South Carolina. I work on the Johansen Plantation as a handmaid for my master's wife. I have two younger sisters, Courtney and Elizabeth, and one older brother Joseph. They work on the plantation as well and so does my mother and father. My mother work in the fields picking cotton like most of the other slaves and my father mostly does all of the lifting and heavy work for our master. =A page from the journal of= = = =Entry number 1:= This morning as i left the cabin to go work in the house for the masters wife, my mother told me to watch out for what the masters family was saying because she had heard around the plantation from the other slaves that my brother was going to get sold to another plantation to pay off the masters debt. I was terribly mad when I heard this and I was willing to do anything to keep my brother safe. So after i helped Mrs. Johansen put on her clothes and while i was combing her hair i heard Mr. Johansen get upset he came in there with us he was talking about he owed another planter some money and didnt have it so he needed to sell a slave. But he called it a piece of property. Mrs. Johansen asked which piece of property was he going to give. He was about to say something but he just looked at me and handed Mrs. Johansen a piece of paper and left out the room. I was puzzled for a moment then I remembered what my mother said about listening so I pretended to comb Mrs. Johansens hair while i read the paper. It said Mr. Wilburn since I dont have enough money to pay I will wiillingly give you a piece of my property, Joseph Hopkins. I paused for a moment so it had to be true my brother was to be sold and I knew he was the only Joseph Hopkins on the plantation I wanted to cry but i couldn't it would be too obvious to the Johansens. As soon as i got back to the cabin I told my family of what i had saw. My mother and father said we had to get him off the plantation as soon as possible and we only had two weeks. My mother said he should escape with the help of Harriet Tubman. She said Joseph was a good strong determined boy and would qualify to Harriet and would survive. I was thinking it was luck and we did it in time since Harriet Tubman's next stop was the Johansen's plantation so we had to keep watch the word said Moses was coming the next night since she always was clever enough to make her rounds on Saturday and it just had happen to be Friday. So early that morning we got all of Josephs stuff ready and mine's too since we had arranged for me to go along with him since i was a strong girl I was nervous and anxious at the same time but not knowing what would happen if we got caught. But since it has said to be that Harriet has never been caught in all of her journies to freedom that she has taken and that she has never lost a passenger on neither one of her trips. I thought we had nothing to worry about since she had free herself and came back to get her family and that she knew to come and get us on a Saturday night when the masters are not alert and they will never know when it occured because it wasnt printed in the papers until that Monday. She was pretty clever and I wanted to be like her so much. But I still had a few questions in mind like where did they sleep, eat, who helped her, and how long would it take but where were we trying to get to. I asked my mother those same questions and she said you will have to talk to Moses about that(we liked to call her Moses because we didnt want out masters to find out who she was and she wouldnt be able to help anyone anymore). My mother also told me that she will most likely take us to the North since thats where it was safe at. I just went on to do my duties in the big house but i was also anxious about the evening coming up.I had told the rest of my family I would miss them and we would send for them after we were free. = = ==Entry Number 2: == Moses came right after dusk. I heard the whipporeal sound and know that it was time to go. I tried to eat all i could and get all of the rest that i could but i was just too anxious. Harriet told us that she wasnt going to take us to the North anymore because it was too dangerous because of all the laws that have been enforced that could send slaves back to their homes. She said that she was going to take us to Canada by using the Underground Railroad. I had heard the word Underground Railroad once before but I didnt know what it meant. I was going to ask her the meaning but before I could find the words to ask her she were already telling us. She said it wasnt really underground or a railroad she said that they just called it that because it was like a secretive passage way traveled at night for the fugitives could be free. Another thing that she said was that there were some Quakers and abolishinsts that were against slavery and they gave us a place to live and each for a couple of nights while we on the Underground Railroad. I thought that was pretty nice why couldnt all white folks be like that i guess they would rather see us work. By that time we had been walking for a while, Moses looked like she was in kind of good shape and didnt look like it was hurting her at all. My legs werent hurting yet but i knew if we would walk this far and this long everyday that it would start soon and I told my self that I needed to stay strong. We took about a five minute break to kind of catch some of our breath and eat a little food that we have gathered to take with us on our journey. At one point of time when we had started back walking we had thought we had heard someone coming so we stopped and hid behind a bush but we think it might have been an animal.(hopefully). The sky was lighting and we didnt want to get caught so we found us somewhere deep in the forest to lay down and rest before night fell again. It was good that it was the middle of Summer because we didnt have to worry about it being cold and not being able to light a fire in the cold because it would draw attention to us. After about a week and a half or so when the food started getting low and we were kind of weary. Moses took us to a house on the Underground Railroad she said that they would feed us and give us a little bit of shelter. When she went up to the door she told us to hide behind some trees. It wasnt hard because it was only five of us. But i thought that it was for the safety of us. I heard her whisper something after she knocked on the door I couldnt exactly make out what was i thought maybe she just didnt want to talk loud and want to be heard by anyone else that was around. Then a few seconds later Moses motioned for us to go in. We had a lovely dinner it was the best that I have eaten all my life and they cooked more and more for us. Afterwards they gave us some hay to lay down on in their barn and i slept kind of good it was better than the hard ground and rock though. But as soon as night fell we were on our way again they told us that we could take some food with us. We took a lot i knew that it was going to last us for a few weeks. Whie we were on our journey again Moses told us of another story of how slaves escaped but during that whole time i was thinking about how my family was doing back on the plantation and i wish that they could have came with us. And everytime I look over at Joseph I can see my father's face since they resemble each other a lot. We walked for a month and we when we tried to go to the next Underground Railroads house they wouldnt let us in because they said that their home had been searched and that they were sorry but they sneaked us some food out the door and that is what we ate on for the next few weeks. Then Harriet told us that we were arriving into the Northern States I got excited that we were far but scared because if we got caught we could have been sent back to our plantation and no telling what they would do to us. While in the Northern states we got a little money from a man named Fredrick Douglas. Moses had told us about him too. She said that they were real close friends. We also were treated a little finer there most of the white folks were much nicer. Then thats when we finally mad it to Canada I was so happy and relieved.

==Entry Number 3:== We have finally made it to freedom and i was happy so excited when we got to Canada. Joseph and I moved in together and he got married so he his wife and I all stayed together we thought that would have been the better thing to do. Some one their had told us the news that a Preacher named Nat Turner led a slave revolt and was killed. They also said that he had fifty to sixty other blacks join him and they raged on plantations killing masters and other white folks even the children. They said that they killed at least fifty-five white people in total. thein i thought to myself they must have really been mad, I wonder what happend to them for doing all of this thats when I later found out that most of the slaves were captured and hanged. And he tried to hide out to avoid being caught but he was eventually captured and sentenced to be hanged and skinned. When I heard that a great chill went down my spine and I started having thoughts about what if that would have happended to us if we had gotten caught trying to escape. We had eventually sent for the rest of my family a month after we became free and had gotten situated with our new home. But when we had went back down to South Carolina i heard bad news. My father had been killed since he was one of the ones that joined the revolt with Nat Turner. I was so mad at him. But I guess I couldnt be mad for that long. I guess my father just wanted to be free and couldnt take it any more. I just didnt know what to do. It felt like a great part of me have been tooken away and I thought that I wasnt going to live. But I did. So my family packed up its stuff and put it in the wagon. We were starting a new life. Now that the war was won and we still cherished my father Jonny Hopkins deeply in our hearts.

1. How does one's understanding of slavery affect his understanding of the people and events of the 1850s and 1860s?
They would have thought that the slaves had it hard and rough back then compared to the white folks. And they would have understood how the slaves would have been strong to survive the beatings they got and how they had to work hard in the field all day and they were treated as property. They also would have noticed some of the intelligent and smart slaves like Harriet Tubman that escaped and the ones that could read and some of the white people that were nice and that helped some of the slaves escaped. Also, the rebellions that took place and how the slaves were brave enough to revolt against the white people and slave owners. And how the Civil War was fought to stop the slavery that was going on.

2. Why would slavery ever be condoned in the United States?
Slavery was condoned in the United States because the people condoning the slavery didn't care anything about the slaves and didn't care how they were treated. They also wanted the slaves to work for them and make money off of them when they produced the rice and ect. they also didn't want to work themselves so they made the slaves do the work.

3. Was the Civil War the only means to end slavery in the United States?
Yes, the Civil War was only meant to end slavery in the United States because, the war was only fought between two sides of the United States and slavery only ended in the United States because slavery still went on in other countries decades after the Civil War was fought and slavery was ended in the United States.

4. What are some of the long-term effects of slavery that are linked to the people and events of the past?
Some of the long-term effects of slavery was during segregation when the whites treated the blacks different because of their skin color and they thought that they weren't good enough to do anything like the white people did the slaves back during slavery. They thought since the blacks were a different color they had to be treated different. But people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks changed it because they didnt want to be treated different like the slaves were treated back during slavery. They were like Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglas and they wanted to make a difference.