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Upon my completion of reading The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African many questions swam through my mind about the institution of slavery, Christianity as well as our current human condition. Many of those questions being relevant today in the wake of our current social crisis with race, class, and religious intolerance. How was it possible for an entire race of people to be submissive to cruel and inhumane treatment for four hundred years? How were people claiming to be Christian able to act in this manner towards any other human, Christian or otherwise? How has this affected the African society as a whole? And what can we, as in all of humanity, learn from the sale of humans as chattel? One thing cannot be forgotten in this analysis; slavery was the trade in human life in which the “goods” were essentially stolen. This means that children were kidnapped for their parents, adults from their homes, souls from their bodies. The enslavement of people effectively dehumanized both the slave and the owner. By bringing the slave owner down to the level of “savage” in which the owner showed a total disregard for the physical and emotional welfare of the person whom they stripped of their freedom. And