Open Letter To A Slave Master

[JAUQO III-X]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow...ortBy%3Dlatest

Full story here.

Letters of Note: To My Old Master

[Ayce]

Now that is how you write a letter.
I really hate to say this, but can you imagine what that letter would look like if written by someone educated in todays system?

[Dr. Cheese]

It is always cool to hear how much literate sounding even people with very poor educations sounded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I remember seeing excerpts from Jack Johnson's biography, and I cannot image any modern boxer sounding so literate. The same goes for any writers from that era of any group or background.

It is ironic that we have mass literacy now, but sound so much less literate when we write. I suspect that we suffer from a diet of tabloids and TV while people in the nineteenth century were reading The King James Bible and Shakespeare.

[dmusic148]

Man. The next time you THINK you have a problem, read that again.

[colcifer]

Full of win.

[sandmangeck]

That letter is astounding. I got chills.

[armywalaby]

that dude is my new role model.

[MakiSupaStar]

Awesome. I'm going to show this to my students.

[SoonerMatt]

That's awesome, gotta love the less-than-subtle middle finger to the colonel throughout.

[IconBasser]

fantastic letter. Reading between the lines, I see that Mr. Anderson had an excellent sense of dry wit. I especially liked "Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."

[stratovani]

I can almost imagine what that letter would have contained if it was written today. Every other word would have been a word beginning with the letter "f", liberally sprinkled with "gd", and the former slave owner would have been called the slang term for the human anus a good number of times. Also there probably would have been mention of certain gang members going down to take care of the good Colonel Anderson! I have to give Jourdan Anderson credit, writing with such class and style, but as already mentioned it was pretty common in those days to write like this.

[Joe Gress]

And that is exactly how you carry yourself when you politely and intelligently tell someone to go **** themselves.

[fourstringdrums]

That was really something else to read. I imagine that he could have, and probably wanted to, simply put "F*** You", but instead he wrote very succinctly, with obvious humor to his old "boss".

[kesslari]

That is really great. Thank you for sharing it.

[Smurf-o-Deth]

[chicago_mike]

You have two options in life. The high road and the low road. This is taking the high road, with wit.

I hope the letter is framed and displayed.

[Dr. Cheese]

Originally Posted by stratovani

I can almost imagine what that letter would have contained if it was written today. Every other word would have been a word beginning with the letter "f", liberally sprinkled with "gd", and the former slave owner would have been called the slang term for the human anus a good number of times. Also there probably would have been mention of certain gang members going down to take care of the good Colonel Anderson! I have to give Jourdan Anderson credit, writing with such class and style, but as already mentioned it was pretty common in those days to write like this.

Virtually no one in today's society writes letters like the one Jourdan Anderson sent to the Colonel, the decline in quality writing is not something that just affects the black community. As for the tone of the letter, it would have been fine with me if Jourdan had written Colonel Anderson an angry letter. He would have been more than within his rights to chew his former master out or threaten him. Jourdan Anderson chose not to, and his letter probably was much more humiliating to his former master than a threat ever could have been.

[THand]

Originally Posted by Dr. Cheese

Virtually no one in today's society writes letters like the one Jourdan Anderson sent to the Colonel, the decline in quality writing is not something that just affects the black community. As for the tone of the letter, it would have been fine with me if Jourdan had written Colonel Anderson an angry letter. He would have been more than within his rights to chew his former master out or threaten him. Jourdan Anderson chose not to, and his letter probably was much more humiliating to his former master than a threat ever could have been.

I don't know. We can speculate, but I imagine a real life former slave would have been very, very conditioned to suppressing his anger and letting it vent through sarcasm and/or humor. Plus the very thought of angry, now free, former slaves returning to their former homes to exact revenge would have been something nightmares were made of for some former owners and fear of that very thing was probably part of the roots of segregation (IMO).
So, I think a truly threatening letter would have been very shocking at first (who does he think "he" is...how dare he!), and after the shock wore off, I think he would have been terrified. I mean TERRIFIED to his core.

On a side note, and it doesn't take away from the manner of thinking or speaking or attitude, but the letter was dictated, so who knows how many times he may have wanted to make a threat and was advised not to. Still, it's the message he wanted to send for sure.

[Dr. Cheese]

Originally Posted by THand

I don't know. We can speculate, but I imagine a real life former slave would have been very, very conditioned to suppressing his anger and letting it vent through sarcasm and/or humor. Plus the very thought of angry, now free, former slaves returning to their former homes to exact revenge would have been something nightmares were made of for some former owners and fear of that very thing was probably part of the roots of segregation (IMO).
So, I think a truly threatening letter would have been very shocking at first (who does he think "he" is...how dare he!), and after the shock wore off, I think he would have been terrified. I mean TERRIFIED to his core.

On a side note, and it doesn't take away from the manner of thinking or speaking or attitude, but the letter was dictated, so who knows how many times he may have wanted to make a threat and was advised not to. Still, it's the message he wanted to send for sure.

The dynamic of fear of revenge is something that is still very much at the core of black/white relations to this day in America and many other parts of the world. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a black person, especially black men be described as scary or threatening, I could probably buy "low end" Fodera or at least a really nice Sadowsky Metro or used Ken Smith.

Back to the letter, a threatening letter might have terrified the colonel, but it would also have allowed to play victim and feel justitifed about the predjudice that he most likely still felt in his heart.

[Ziltoid]

That letter is awesome. Loved it.