Write the summary of the essay entitled “The Twelve Million Black Voices”.

Write the summary of the essay entitled “The Twelve Million Black Voices“.

Ans.

Introduction

The black people with their dark skin in the United States of America are call Negroes and by that word their life is regulated. It also shows their social status and their problems. They live in the physiological island surrounded by the masses of white people. They exchange social business with the people of the white race everyday. There is a boundary wall between the white and the black races for more than three hundred years. During that period the hopes and aspirations of the black people have been dashed without any social blending between them. The black people have been living in slavery of the white people with a clear subjection of such a long period. Though slavery has been abolished, yet they have not regained their true normal life. Such social slavery has done a great wrong to the black people.

There are about twelve million black people in the USA

It is necessary to mention that there are about twelve million black people in the USA. More than half of them are the tillers of the soil. Three-fourths are share-croppers and day labourers because they are not the owners of the land. During the spring season apple buds blossom, honey-suckles creep up the sides of their houses and sunflowers also grow in the fields. In the summer season the magnolia trees can be seen growing in the countryside with their sweet scent. In autumn they pick cotton and gin it. In winter they cut trees to collect wood. In the rainy season creeks are seen growing beside the rivers. In this way the Negroes of America love their land and they keep their relationship with the soil.

The Negroes live on the tobacco, sugarcane, rice and cotton plantation. Both the media and the church paint the beautiful and romantic picture of their agricultural life but in their real life they live under the constant fear of the lords of the land. The black people live on the mercy of the white people who change their mind about them.

Three classes of people

There are three classes of people above the black race. First there are the lords of the land who own the plantations. Secondly there are the Bosses of the Building who are the owners of the industry. Thirdly there are a large number of poor white workers competing with the black people in their daily life for their bread and butter. All the three classes of people control the black people who are at the lowest part of the American society.

When the slavery was abolished and the Emancipation proclamation was signed, the black folks were stranded and stood bewildered upon the land they had been tilling for a long time. For them, freedom had no meaning without land. So they begged the lord of the land to permit them tilling the land. Then the system of share-cropping emerged as the new kind of slavery for the Negro people. Freedom also brought some reward for them because many of the black people became free to move about for their work and living. Thousands of them moved from place to place and they made their homes in different places of America. They did not finish as many white people had expected. On the other hand they made progress on the basis of their hard work.

Freedom from slavery gave them their own home

It should be noted that freedom from slavery gave them their own home. Under slavery they could be transferred as farm labourers from place to place. Then they had to leave their women in the house of the landlords to work there as slave girls. The farm labourers had no family life because of moving from farm to farm. Then they could mate with any slave women when their own women served in the houses of the Lords of the Land. The black women learnt manners and the elderly women were called mummy as the symbol of motherhood.

Conclusion

Though black people had got no economic and political power, yet they could manage small units like grocery stores, etc. The laws of Queen Cotton still rule over the lives of the Negroes. It may be known as the law of self-destruction like that woman who bears pain at the child birth like her own death. The more and more cotton plantation left no place for growing vegetables and one day it proved bloody for the black tillers of the land.