A-Infos (en) France, Monde Libertaire - The Terror of Whiteness (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A book of oral testimonies collected between 1936 and 1938, translated 
by Elsa Quéré, entitled *Under the Reign of the Whip: An Oral History of 
Slavery in the United States*. A selection from among 2,300 other 
interviews, it gives voice to those who experienced slavery as children 
or teenagers. These individuals, already very old at the time, describe 
the living conditions of enslaved Black people before abolition in 1863. 
Their accounts reveal the cruelty, terror, and exploitation perpetrated 
by white supremacy in the Southern states. In her preface, Françoise 
Vergès reminds us that the slave system was one of the driving forces 
behind capitalist development both in the USA and in the Caribbean 
islands. These testimonies from women and men describe the living 
conditions of this Black population on the large plantations, the 
customary mistreatment where the whip reigned supreme, the sexual 
violence (barely mentioned in the testimonies?), and the violence of 
separation when a slave, a family member, was sold to another owner. In 
short, they reveal the immense cruelty of the white "masters," both men 
and women, during the period of slavery and even after the so-called 
emancipation following the Civil War.

Here are a few excerpts to illustrate my point.

A pastor's statement: "You Negroes, obey your masters and mistresses and 
steal nothing from them."

Statements from enslaved people: "You had to answer 'Yes, sir, master' 
and bow very low, otherwise the overseer would smack you. We were their 
slaves, we were their dogs."

In 1867, "we were supposed to be free. They promised to pay us, but we 
never got anything."

"Whatever we did, we were entitled to the whip[...]there was a place in 
the kitchen where she tied the slaves to the walls[...]Sometimes, she 
practically tore their backs to shreds."

"I saw men[...]being beaten unconscious with a stick; women stripped 
naked to the hips and whipped."

"Very often he arrived covered in blood from the beatings that damned 
overseer gave him."

"I received an education, but not the kind you get from books. I 
received the education of the whip and beatings." (The slaves were 
absolutely forbidden from learning to read and write.)
The master "threatened to whip me, to immobilize me by tying my hands to 
my feet, and to put an iron muzzle on me. That was the worst part." 
"They whipped poor Leah until she collapsed, almost dead. Then they 
rubbed her wounds with salt and pepper to make her suffer even more."

"The Ku Klux Klan... Those they didn't whip, they hung by their fingers 
and toes."

"White people told us we were born to work for them and that we did it 
very well."

This period was appalling and left deep scars on communities across the 
United States. Trumpism, with its white supremacist and men's rights 
militias, is a lamentable illustration of this even today.

Hugues
Groupe Commune de Paris

Quéré E. (trans.), 2026 Under the Reign of the Whip: An Oral History of 
Slavery in the United States, Toulouse, Ed. Ici-bas

https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8861
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