Class Four

In class today we  discussed Life in the Iron Mills, The Lynching of Jube Benson and Sport of the Gods. For those who aren't familiar with either story, Life in the Iron Mills is a story about the sad lives of American industrial factory workers. It was written by Rebecca Harding-Davis in 1861. I think it was an interesting read even though I'm more of a science fiction fan myself. The sad lives of the workers definitely reminded of slavery. I'd thought the only difference between factory life and slavery was that slavery was unpaid. But after speaking with the Professor he bought up an interesting fact that made me change my mind about them being similar lifestyles to both just being different forms of slavery.

The Lynching of Jube Benson was about a slave who was falsely accused of raping and murdering a girl his master was in love with. The saddest part of the story was that the slave wasn't proven innocent until after he'd already been lynched. It was a perfect example of racism, because the actual murderer was in fact a white man who'd painted his face black with dirt so that a black man would be blamed for the horrible act he'd committed. The other story Sport of the Gods is about a family torn apart by the father, Berry Hamilton is arrested and sent to prison for a theft he didn't commit. The similarity is that both black men in the stories end up paying for a crime that a white man had committed, which sucks. One difference I found was that while Jube Benson was killed, Berry Hamilton was just put in prison for five years until his innocence was proven by a reporter named Mr. Skaggs.