'Talking Animals' (Dictio Grex)

FOREWORD: I have had an interest in slavery ever since I was an adolescent in southern Missouri. I remember a fellow employee on my first full-time job telling me his great grandfather had owned a slave back in Neosho, Missouri, and how that slave got loaned out to neighbors when they needed an extra hand. It was hard for me to conceive that the very ground I was standing on was once populated with human merchandise that could be sold as casually as we now buy an automobile or a refrigerator. I had grown up in a race-segregated society and wondered what the origins were of Negroes (as they were then called) having to sit in the balcony at the movie theater (even though they paid the same admission), not being allowed to eat in `white-only' restaurants, having to sit in separate sections on the busses and trains, and only being allowed to use `colored' restrooms and water fountains. It all seemed kind of silly even then, but I never questioned it. At that time, I didn't realize I, like many contemporary Americans, was suffering from our legacy of race-related slavery, i.e., racism Years later, I began to travel all over the world. Among other things, I visited the many edifices, roads, aqueducts and amphitheaters thousands and thousands of slaves had built during the long-running Roman Empire; the `door of no return' at Goree Island off the coast of Senegal where slaves were sold by the pound and then shipped away to the Americas under such indescribable conditions that a third perished on the journey; and the suffocating `holding pens' of the famous slave market at Zanzibar where thousands of Africans changed hands every week of the year. I also visited the island in Viet Nam where coolies were sold like cattle for the French plantations south of there; the `slave suqs' of Morocco where every Thursday slaves were commonly auctioned off up until the beginning of the 20th century; and the `freedom post' in Bahrain where the British had emancipated slaves clear up until 1971 in the old Gulf Trucial States. Other journeys let me visit the sun-soaked farms of India where `debt slaves' work the land, their labor mortgaged generation after generation to the land owners there (who to this day refuse to label this `slavery') and the old gold mines of Peru where first Indian slaves and later black slaves lived at best a decade after being sold to the mine owners and chained in place within the deep holes in the ground often to never see daylight again. All over the world slavery had left its mark. I soon became aware most slavery practiced in the world had nothing to do with one's skin color; race-related slavery was mainly restricted to the New World. But any American doesn't have to travel far to be aware of slavery. My home was right on the Ohio River where Kentucky joins Indiana - `Signal Rock' told the Kentucky slaves when to cross if they dared and seek freedom in the north. To do so, some of them traveled at night right up a creek bed (that ran through my property) so the dogs of the bounty hunters wouldn't get them. As a psychologist studying the phenomenon of slavery, I became fascinated with the incredible human spirit, the indomitable determination, the amazing adaptation and, most of all, the enduring optimism slaves exhibited over the ages amidst their terrible suffering including much physical agony and unbelievable psychological angst. Most slaves lost everything: their identities, their friends, their families, and their sense of self-worth. They often ended up in places totally alien to them where they neither understood the language or the customs. Invariably they were thrust into the bottom of the heap both socially and economically. Most had no hope of eventual freedom, some had been born into it, and those having children witnessed their offspring sold off just like they had been. Surely many slaves must have suffered what psychologists and psychiatrists now diagnose as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and indeed slaves often seemed to exhibit many of the same symptoms we see today in those suffering severe trauma. Some tried to kill themselves when they realized what had happened to them; some killed themselves before they could even be turned into slaves. Some limped out their lives suffering from chronic depression; some slowly died of lack of interest in living; some couldn't comprehend the treatment they received or what was expected of them; some were overwhelmed that fellow humans who now owned them perceived them as subhuman no better than beasts of burden and devoid of human emotions or aspirations. Perhaps the best adjusted were slaves who had been born into it - they benefitted from never knowing any other condition outside of being owned. But most slaves did survive; most did what they could to achieve what happiness was possible in their servile state; and some even managed to escape it altogether either through manumission, a successful escape, or even a merciful death. Slavery is a sad tale of man's inhumanity to man. But this book is dedicated to all those millions of slaves who survived and passed their great genes on to us. TABLE OF CONTENTS: INTRODUCTION;CONTEMPORARY INTEREST IN SLAVERY; FOUR PREDOMINANT MYTHS SURROUNDING SLAVERY; TYPES OF SLAVES; SOURCES OF SLAVES; PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL & SOCIAL CONTROL OF SLAVES; THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY; RACE-RELATED SLAVERY; RELIGION AND SLAVERY; THE HUMAN FASCINATION WITH POWER OVER OTHERS; POSSIBLE PERSONAL PERSPECTIVES OF A SLAVE DEALER, A SLAVE MASTER,AND A SLAVE [Fasil al-Khalifa, the Arab Slave Dealer; Centurius. The Roman Slave Master; Celia, an American Slave]; REFERENCES & SUGGESTED READINGS