Abstract
More than three hundred years were to pass for the African American race to prove the above lines equitable. In his seminal work From Slavery to Freedom, John Hope Franklin has charted the history of the African population’s forceful voyage to the Americas, referred to as the “middle passage”. This one-way passage was the rare, unheard and unseen of tragedy in the history of human-kind; for the Africans who were carried as slaves to the New World were considered lower than the animals. In the ship they were chained together, with little room to move in this long and painful journey. The mortality rates were high, as the epidemics spread due to the filth and stench; of those who did not die managed to commit suicide by leaping off the ship to avoid the enslavement. Millions were exported to the America to work in the plantation systems, with few evidences of humanitarianism. For the slave owners it was cheaper to import a number of slaves required rather than to preserve their life, so the inhuman treatment of slave became a governing system. These slaves, men and women alike, were made to labour in the fields all day long; and any hint of pause for relaxation would render them with the severe beating from the overseers. Collectively this race suffered from the inhuman and barbarous treatment for centuries.