History Essay

A Great Human
Black History Day is a holiday that this nation embarks every February as way to remember and celebrate many Africans that made a difference in this world.   There are many great men and women that are recognized as heroes when they mention their name. Elementary schools make sure to teach students about these men and women, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.   There is no doubt that they have impacted the lives of all people in one way or another.  
Discrimination and mistreatment was the major issue African Americans dealt with in 20th century; this led to the civil rights movement that evolved the nation to what it is today.   Although it is important to acknowledge men and women of 20th Century, we must also remember the men that came before that.   They lived in a nation that not only discriminated them for being black, but also enslaved them and sold as property.   One in particular was a man name Olaudah Equiano.   His autobiography vividly describes the mistreatment of how he was taken from his family and sold to slavery.   The story not only tells us about the events that happened in his life, but engages us to the emotions such as pain and heartache that Equiano felt through his experience.        
  Without a doubt Equiano was giving an account of what truly happened to men, women, and children of Africa, but was it simply just a story, or was it the begging of one of the first abolitionist against slavery.
This simple quote by Raymond Dolle, author of “Review: Freeing the First Person”, sums up this question of whether Equiano was simply telling a story or had an ulterior motive.   He states “for a predominantly white nineteenth-century audience, the remarkable tales were either interesting glimpses at the institution of slavery or arousing testimonies to the abolitionist cause.”   . The simple truth is that Olaudah Equiano was indeed an abolitionist of his time that made a way for future abolitionist of the 20th century....