I think that the way black slaves were treated in the United States was inhumane and cruel. Masters many times forgo that slaves were actual human beings and in many cases treated them as animals. I’m content that it is not like that anymore, I mean, there are still racist people, but at least racism and discrimination is not legal in this country anymore. It took people such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to achieve equal rights for all. However, during the process and before the process, some of the ways cruelty towards slaves was expressed were the urge and need of the masters to keep slaves ignorant: “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.” (Douglass 937) Some masters wanted to teach their slaves to read and write, but unfortunately they didn’t get much support from other masters: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever until him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” (Douglass 937). Personally, I find these quotes very interesting because they reflect the mentality of slavery in which white masters tried to keep their black slaves ignorant as long as possible because if a slave stopped being ignorant, it would get them in trouble, like it did.