Hidden History of Slavery Informative Speech Outline PDF

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Ro’Shyda Richardson October 2020 Speech Communication, SPC2608 Instructor: Hendrickson Informative Speech Outline Hidden Pieces of History General Purpose

To Inform

Specific Purpose

To inform my audience about the reality of slavery and to share some of their experiences.

Central Idea

Some of the central and most important pieces of slavery are hidden throughout time such as wet nursing, alligator bait and human cannibalism.

Method of Organization

Topical

Introduction I.

(Gain attention and interest) In school today, they don’t teach you everything about African American history. For instance, Harriet Tubman the runaway slave. She was the same one to serve as a spy and a military leader with the union during the civil war. Sitting at a desk, they do not tell you that the first person to file for freedom and win was Elizabeth Freeman in 1744. Over quarantine I learned more about my ancestral history through TikTok and Twitter than I have during my educational career. Not only have the educational system failed me, but I have also failed myself for not being educated about my ancestral history.

II.

(Reveal topic) Throughout time there are hidden pieces of African American history that have yet to be uncovered yet each sacred piece is to be treasured.

III.

(Establish Credibility) After seeing a video on TikTok a few months back, I decided to fact check to see if these unpleasant facts were true. After weeks of research I was able to find little but credible evidence that these facts were indeed true. With the lack of coverage, it looked as though somebody was trying to erase the unpleasant acts of the Europeans from time. But in the end, I was able to reveal and learn the truth.

IV.

(preview main ideas) Throughout history slaves had to face more than the jeopardy of free labor but also the cruel and viscousness of Europeans. Some of the hidden pieces of history are wet nursing amongst enslaved mothers, pickaninnies as alligator bait and being a victim of human cannibalism.

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Body (Sign post: When taking a dive into history let’s begin by discussing wet nursing.) I.

Wet nursing is a term that originated in the 1700s. Wet nurses are to care for the child of another if the mother is unable to or simply refuses to breastfeed the child herself. A. However, when it comes to slavery many newly African American mothers were forced to feed and care for their master’s offspring. 1. Caucasian women often looked at breastfeeding as a disgrace to motherhood and wondered how it would affect their bodily image. 2. For centuries “black milk, slave mother’s milk, was stolen in vast. generation after generation of white infants ‘drank and drank’ “from the enslaved mothers (West & Knight, 2017, p. 41). B. According to Mothers’ Milk, in the cases that enslaved women were able to breastfeed their offspring they only had a span of six months before they started weaning their infant off breast milk. Despite the fact that they were limited from breastfeeding their own they had to feed their masters offspring for a span of two years. C. Many wet nurses were not able to feed their own which was seen as stealing from their masters. 1. The mothers feed their offspring concoctions that they thought would be a nutritious alternative to breast milk. Despite their precautions, many African American children died from malnutrition and the mother was shunned from the family. 2. When enslaved mothers refused to become wet nurses due to the horrors of the death of their own child from negligence and malnutrition. They were often strapped down and forced to breastfeed the child, milked like cows. In some instances, the children were taken from the mothers, so she had no excuse to not nurse her master's child.

II.

Along with the death of enslaved infants dying from malnutrition. There is no definite date of when the practice started but the term “alligator bait” became a popular term in the 1860’s. A. Many African American children were often used as alligator bait. Alligator hunting was profitable along with their skins. 1. At the start of the early 1800's alligator hunting was a large source of income. Many used the skin to make belts, purses, shoes, and many other items. B. However, the white hunters often put their lives at risk trying to draw alligators to the surface of the swampy waters, so they began to use “pickaninnies” instead. 1. This was the term used to describe a negro child. In places such as Chipley, Florida, the colored children were “allowed to play in shallow water while expert riflemen watch” from nearby. C. These children were stolen from their enslaved mothers during the day and left in chicken coops to pastime until it was time to hunt.

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1.

In the article “Whites Used Black Babies as Alligator Bait” it adds a detail of the horrendous act explaining that at night they would go to the swamp and tie the rope around the neck and torso of the infant tight leaving them screaming. a. They would then continue to throw the child in the water waiting for an alligator to clamp his jaws on the child before the white men standing by would take action to kill the gator for its profits

(Transition: Now that we have covered the use of picaninnies as alligator bait, let's discuss human cannibalism amongst the enslaved and their masters.) III.

"The origins of this U.S. culture of consumption trace back to the...early twentieth century"(Woodward et al, 2014, p.9). Starting with the European Colonizers and Costal Africans who referred to the meal consisting of mankind as "negro soup". A. For Example, Nat Turner was a black rebel located in Southampton, Virginia. Black members of the community left "oral records" stating that they boiled-down his flesh and devoured his meat asking them if they would like to join. B. “So much love and hate involved in eating something; to kill something and eat it. It’s very sexual, very sensual” (Woodward et al, 2014, p.14). This is what Kara Walker used to describe the Europeans and white cannibalism when it came to their sense of “masochism.” 1. According to “The Delectable Negro,” masters would choose their “favorite” male slave to subside their appetite. C. The desire for the blacks “was less about literal consumption and more about the cultivated taste the white person developed for the African.” (Woodward et al, 2014, p.18) 1. Whites would often feed into this hunger through “acts of violence, sexual exploitation, imagined ingestion of the black or through staged rituals designed to…harvest black spirit and soul” with consumption soon to follow afterwards (Woodward et al, 2014, p.18)

Conclusion I.

(Signal Ending) To conclude, all throughout history there are hidden pieces of slavery that the world may never know. In school elementary teachers state that they are "worried about disturbing children" and by the time they reach middle and high school their textbooks are too outdated and is slavery like a "dot on a timeline" (Stewart, 2019, para. 4). Nikita Stewart describes this lack of teaching as an "educational malpractice".

II.

(Reinforce central idea) Most pieces are in sight yet out of knowledge due to the lack of coverage. However, some of the pieces that came to light today is the practice of wet nursing, using pickaninnies as gator bait and ingesting the body of the enslaved.

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Bibliography Reunion Black Family. (2013, December 23). Whites Used Black Babies as Alligator Bait. https://www.reunionblackfamily.com/apps/blog/show/40995952-whites-used-black-babies-asalligator-bait. Stewart, N. (2019, August 19). Why can't we teach this. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com West, E., & Knight, R. J. (2017). Mothers’ Milk: Slavery, Wet-Nursing, and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South. Journal of Southern History, 83(1), 37–68. https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2017.0001 Woodard, V., Joyce, J. A., & McBride, D. A. (2014). In The delectable Negro: human consumption and homoeroticism within U.S. slave culture (pp. 1–311). introduction, New York Univ. Press....