While reading this book, To Be a Slave by Julius Lester, I found out that resistance was the only way black people were able to come out of slavery back in the 1700s and 1800s. In the process, a lot of death took place for resisting to be a slave. During this period many of my sisters and brothers died from rebellion to the laws white people had made for us to live by. Shooting us, hanging us, and cutting us apart with sharp knives were their methods of controlling slaves.
     On the other hand, many of the preachers had brainwashed blacks into thinking that God wanted these things to happen to us. They were not reading the Bible right. They were telling us that what whites were doing to us was okay. We were told that it was God who said it was right as to what they were doing to us, and we were supposed to be happy because they gave us somewhere to live. They lied to us because they were really afraid of losing control over the black race. We were told things like God made us slaves to be servants to the white race. We were told never to look at ourselves as being human or equal to them.
     Somewhere during a church service, one of the old Negroes starting feeling the Holy Spirit and he yelled out, “Glory be to God. I feel free.” Later on during that day, he was told to be quiet and not say anything in church, and they would give him a new pair of boots. When the services started, he tried very hard not to say anything, but he could not hold back the Holy Spirit. He yelled out, “Glory be to God!” and forgot them boots.
     While reading this part, it reminded me when I was once in church and I started seeing these people jumping up and down yelling, “Glory be to God.” I thought something was wrong with them until one day I was standing on the corner asking people for some money and the Holy Spirit hit me. I started saying, “Glory be to God,” and it was a feeling I had never experienced before in my life! Right then I understood how they felt back in the 1700s and 1800s.
     I like how Julius Lester put this book together because it let me know how blacks really lived during the time of slavery.