Diary of a Slave

Dark like the skies on a moonless night, this is the color of our skin. Beautiful as the flowers on a spring day, this is the essence of my people. Black butterflies ... Watch us as we sail across the waters. No more can we spread our wings, for we are bound and shackled deep in the hull of a ship destined for a strange new world where we shall no longer be free. Just this morning we were great chieftains, princesses, strong warriors, and medicine men. Then the white man came with his guns and whips, and snatched us from our motherland --- the land that we have known and loved all our lives; the land that made us what we are today. Oh mother. . . dear motherland, will we ever see your welcoming shores again? Will we forever be the hated race? to be treated worse than all of God's creatures? Look at us now --- black butterflies jumping from the ship into the deep dark waters of the ocean, never to spread our wings or fly again; too frightened to face what little fate had thrust upon us; black butterflies bound and shackled deep in the hull of a ship, so crowded, so full of filth and stench that some of us perished before we could reach the shores of the white man's world.