Rose Williams was sixteen years old when her enslaver told her she'd been paired with a man named Rufus to produce children. When Rufus climbed into her bed, she grabbed a fireplace poker. Her mistress told her plainly: "De massa wants yous to raise him chillens." Her enslaver threatened the whipping stake if she refused. She thought about her mother — also bought at the same auction — and made the only choice she had. She had two children. The day she was freed, she left and never returned. In 1937, at over ninety years old, she told a government interviewer everything. "I never marries," she said, "'cause one 'sperience am 'nough." #BlackHistory #HiddenHistory #AmericanHistory #SlaveryHistory #historymatters

A soldier in New Orleans in 1815 wrote about a man named George wearing a spiked iron collar that made sleep physically impossible. Four spikes, angled so lying down in any direction drove metal into the ground beneath him. Some collars had bells on iron rods above the wearer's head — so an escaping person could be tracked by sound in the dark. Formerly enslaved man Moses Roper called them "an instrument of torture" in his 1838 memoir. A collar used on a man named Ben after his third escape attempt stayed in the enslaver's family for 175 years before being donated to a museum. Surviving examples are in museums today. #BlackHistory #HiddenHistory #AmericanHistory #SlaveryHistory #historymatters