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"createdAt": "2025-08-20T00:22:06.373Z",
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"alt": "BRANDING BLACKNESS\n\nBIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY AND THE SURVEILLANCE OF BLACKNESS\n\nTwo days before embarkation, the head of every male and female is neatly shaved; and if the cargo belongs to several owners, each mans brand is im¬ pressed on the body of his respective negro. This operation is performed with pieces of silver wire, or small irons fashioned into the merchant s initials.\n\n—Theodore canot, Memoirs of a Slave Trader\n\nWe have been branded by Cartesian philosophy.\n\n—aime cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism\n\nLet’s face it. I am a marked woman, but not everybody knows my name.\n\n—HORTENSE SPILLERS\n\nYou can find Wilson Chinn on eBay.com or other online auction sites for sale among antebellum ephemera. Wilson Chinn’s portrait was taken around 1863 by Myron H. Kimball, a photographer with an interest in da¬ guerreotype and a correspondent with the Philadelphia Enquirer during New York’s 1853 World’s Fair. Kimball also served as an official photogra¬ pher for the Freedman’s Bureau. In this particular portrait, a chain is tied around Chinn’s ankle and various tools of torture lie at his feet: a paddle, a leg iron, a metal prodding device. The caption below the image reads, “exhibiting Instruments of Torture used to punish slaves.” The carte de visite (figure 3.1) captures Wilson Chinn’s stare at the camera. Particularly striking is the “longhorn,” or pronged metal collar, fastened around Chinn’s neck. An 1862 copy of Harper’s Weekly describes this torture device as con¬ sisting of three metal prongs, “each two feet in length, with a ring on the end,” to which would be attached a chain to “secure the victim beyond all\n\nWILSON OHINN, a Branded Blare (Mm Louiaiana Alan exhibiting Inatrumenta of Torture uaed to puniah Slarea.\n\nPhotographed by Hob*LI, 477 Broadway, N. V Entered according to Act of Cougrru. In the year lttO. by Gbq. H. Hans, In the Clerk’• 0 ®c« of tne United States for the Southern Dlatrlct of New*Tork.\n",
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"alt": "is slaves to feed the others with the flesh. They died not\nonly from the regime but from grief and rage and despair.\nThey undertook vast hunger strikes; undid their chains\nand hurled themselves on the crew in futile attempts at\ninsurrection. What could these inland tribesmen do on the\nopen sea, in a complicated sailing vessel? To brighten their\nspirits it became the custom to have them up on the deck\nonce a day and force them to dance. Some took the oppor\ntunity to jump overboard, uttering cries of triumph as they\ncleared the vessel and disappeared below the surface.\nFear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew.\nOne captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and\ndividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each\nof the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with\nthe same torture .• Such incidents were not rare. Given the\ncircumstances such things were (and are) inevitable. Nor\ndid the system spare the slavers. Every year one-fifth of all\nwho took part in the Mrican trade died.\nAll America and the West Indies took slaves. When\nthe ship reached the harbour. the cargo came up on deck\nto be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects.\nlooked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the\nperspiration to see if the slave's blood was pure and his\nhealth as good as his appearance. Some of the women af\nfected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse,\nwould have caused them to be kicked 20 yards across the\ndeck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore\nthe dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an\nexamination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave.\nHaving become the property of his owner, he was branded\non both sides of the breast with a hot iron. His duties were\nexplained to him by an interpreter, and a priest instructed\nhim in the first principles of Christianity.1",
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"alt": "he massacre of the whites was a tragedy; not for the\nwhites. For these old slave-owners, those who burnt a little\npowder in the arse of a Negro, who buried him alive for\ninsects to eat, who were well treated by Toussaint, and\nwho, as soon as they got the chance, began their old cruel\nties again; for these there is no need to waste one tear or\none drop of ink. The tragedy was for the blacks and the\nMulattoes. It was not policy but revenge, and revenge has\nno place in politics. The whites were no longer to be feared,\nand such purposeless massacres degrade and brutalise a\npopulation, especially one which was just beginning as a\nnation and had had so bitter a past. The people did not\nwant it--all the wanted was freedom. and independence",
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"text": "idk - branding humans like cattle, chaining them to dead bodies, feeding them to each other, filling them with gunpowder then blowing them up, burying them alive for insects to eat -- it being so bad mothers killed their children and people jumped from ships to drown\n\nseems, like, super bad dude"
}