Black History Fact

Drapetomania

What is drapetomania, it is a term that was originated and hypothesized in 1851 by a man named Samuel Cartwright who was a medical doctor that practiced medicine in the South? He came up with this racial theory when an African slave would runaway, Cartwright considered that the slaves had a disease, a mental illness when one wanted to flee.

Think about this because an African slave wanted to escape from being beaten, dehumanize, raped, and who wanted to escape captivity. They were literally diagnosed.   Below is some interesting information about Drapetomania:

Southern doctors used pseudo-science to explain why slaves tried to escape while ignoring the fact that maybe they just didn't like being slaves. It’s easy to forget that up until very recently, slavery was a normal and accepted way of life. Since the beginning of recorded history, some humans have enslaved others, and people accepted it as the way of the world. It is boggling to the modern Western mind to think of slavery as the natural order, but in the United States, before the Civil War ended the institution for good, people twisted logic into knots trying to justify owning slaves.

It might seem absurdly obvious as to why someone bound by the shackles of slavery would make a break for it at the first chance they got, but back when racist ideas were accepted as scientific fact, bewildered slaveowners turned to psychology to try and understand why their slaves were running

In the masters’ view, slaves had been put on this earth to serve; in return, they were provided with food, clothes, and homes. It was baffling to the slaveholders that the human beings they regarded as property would be willing to give this all up for freedom.

Southern physician Samuel Cartwright believed he had found a rational explanation for this disturbing desire escape servitude. He dubbed this disease of the mind “drapetomania” (with Greek roots roughly translating to “runaway slave” and “crazy”) and reassured slaveowners that it was entirely curable by “whipping the devil” out of the slaves who suffered from it.

Cartwright was convinced drapetomania was a psychological disorder because “the Creator’s will in regard to the negro [declares] him to be a submissive knee-bender;” in other words, black people were put on this earth to be slaves, and servitude was ingrained in their nature.

Wikimedia Commons       A poster advertising a reward for a runaway slave.

To read more  you can go to,

https://allthatsinteresting.com/drapetomania

Stay safe. Blessings and Love,

Lola Jones