Go Down Mosess Meaning
Michael Johnson
Dr. Chante' Martin M. Ba
African American Lit
2/24/2018
The Spirit of the Enslaved
The story of the American negro is filled with Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Through trials of pain and suffering to help construct create this country. Thousands upon thousands of African natives were taken from their lands to work the fields as slaves in a world that saw them as nothing but property. So to me, it is no wonder that many desired freedoms instead of the hardships of slavery, so they fought to head north. In many slaveholding states, it was illegal to teach a slave how to read and write, so they used songs as a way …show more content…
To me, this meaning means that a person’s soul can be affected by the words or songs the people hears in his/her lifetime and can influence them more than any action can. When the slaves were put out into the field to work long hours without pay, they would come up with new and creative songs that would emulate the way that they felt during slavery. One such song is called “Go Down Moses”. This song was a freedom song. This song was created after the Old Testament in the bible which tales the Israelites (African slaves) that one of their people will one-day help lead them to freedom from the white slaveholders (who in the song is Pharaoh). The day finally arrived when one of their own people would lead them to freedom and her name was Harriet Tubman who was a former slave who escaped to the north and created other routes to get other slaves to freedom. She was dubbed Moses by the people she …show more content…
The song was named after the hollowed out guards the slaves had to drink from. The northern star in the sky was shown as the Big Dipper in the sky. This was also a secret code for the runaway slaves to get to the north. The song was spread around by “Peg Leg Joe” so that slaves could escape the oppression of their white slave owners and gain freedom in the north or Canada. Virginia The song would begin by speaking of the moving only after winter has ended so the river banks had not yet melted over yet so you go there before it melts to escape to slave owners. “Of the one to two thousand slaves annually that made it to safety in the north, almost all came from the Border States, not the Deep South”. This song could not help deep southern slaves because it required them to go too far in a short amount of times; so it only helped to be close to the border states like Kentucky and
Dr. Chante' Martin M. Ba
African American Lit
2/24/2018
The Spirit of the Enslaved
The story of the American negro is filled with Blood, Sweat, and Tears. Through trials of pain and suffering to help construct create this country. Thousands upon thousands of African natives were taken from their lands to work the fields as slaves in a world that saw them as nothing but property. So to me, it is no wonder that many desired freedoms instead of the hardships of slavery, so they fought to head north. In many slaveholding states, it was illegal to teach a slave how to read and write, so they used songs as a way …show more content…
To me, this meaning means that a person’s soul can be affected by the words or songs the people hears in his/her lifetime and can influence them more than any action can. When the slaves were put out into the field to work long hours without pay, they would come up with new and creative songs that would emulate the way that they felt during slavery. One such song is called “Go Down Moses”. This song was a freedom song. This song was created after the Old Testament in the bible which tales the Israelites (African slaves) that one of their people will one-day help lead them to freedom from the white slaveholders (who in the song is Pharaoh). The day finally arrived when one of their own people would lead them to freedom and her name was Harriet Tubman who was a former slave who escaped to the north and created other routes to get other slaves to freedom. She was dubbed Moses by the people she …show more content…
The song was named after the hollowed out guards the slaves had to drink from. The northern star in the sky was shown as the Big Dipper in the sky. This was also a secret code for the runaway slaves to get to the north. The song was spread around by “Peg Leg Joe” so that slaves could escape the oppression of their white slave owners and gain freedom in the north or Canada. Virginia The song would begin by speaking of the moving only after winter has ended so the river banks had not yet melted over yet so you go there before it melts to escape to slave owners. “Of the one to two thousand slaves annually that made it to safety in the north, almost all came from the Border States, not the Deep South”. This song could not help deep southern slaves because it required them to go too far in a short amount of times; so it only helped to be close to the border states like Kentucky and