By Kevin Cooper
May, 2007
Malcolm X* once spoke about one of the most important people used in America’s slavery system not being written about or spoken about. You may not ever guess who this person is, so I will have to tell you. No, it is not the slave owner, as everyone knows about his role in this country’s slavery system. Nor is it the slave catcher, or the slave transporter, or the slave seller or trader. It is not the plantation overseer or the catcher of escaped slaves.
This person is by far the cruelest and worst human being in this line of work. After truly thinking about it, it is no wonder that for the most part he has been left out of the pages of history. Yet, thought he is invisible, he remains the most important. Who is he, you ask?
He is the slave maker. The person who forcefully made another human being become something that he or she did not want to become – a slave. The mean-spirited person who purposely broke the will and the spirit of the African who refused to willingly become a slave of this country.
Malcolm X made the following comparison: That whenever a wild horse refused to be ridden, it had to be broken and then a person could ride it. The horse’s owner hired someone who specialized in breaking horses – specialized in taking the wildness out of the animal, taking its will, its heart, its spirit, changing its mind. The owner didn’t do this, nor did he allow anyone other than the specialist to break his animal. This person would do anything to break this animal in order to make it submit to the will of the owner.
The slave maker did the exact same thing, and he did what others, including the slave owner, didn’t have the stomach to do. The slave to the slave makers is the same as the horse. Its an animal, so therefore the same type of attitude was used to do the same kind of thing in order to break the will, spirit, heart, mind, and if necessary, the life of this human animal.
To justify the instances of the murder of this animal, the slave maker would use him/her as an example so that the next human animal would be easier to make into a slave, would be more willing to submit. It takes special people to do the unthinkable and unspeakable to other human beings.
This type of person also has another purpose and job. This job has also been excluded for the most part from the pages of history throughout the history of the world, including America. The person doing this job is often spoken of in the third person. They hide their faces by wearing a hood or some type of mask. They do not allow their photographs to be taken or their names made known. The people doing this job, just like the slave maker, are doing something that others do not have the stomach to do.
I speak now of the executioners, who like the slave maker do not see what they do as wrong, or see the people that they are about to execute as human beings. Just like the slave maker, the executioner specializes in their craft and learns how to be an executioner. After all, not just anybody is qualified to be a government murderer! It takes a special person to do this craft.
Executioners dehumanize the people they are about to legally kill. Some torture them or turn a blind eye to the torture. Others have a cold heart towards all condemned people and just simply allow them to suffer. Most of the slave makers and executioners were god fearing, god loving, religious men who truly believed that what they did was what god wanted. It was their god given duty to do these things no matter how ungodly the actually were…or are.
These people and what they did, what they still do, are real. No matter how much or how long they are kept out of the history books they will never be forgotten. This is because the pain, the suffering, the harm, and the outright crime against humanity that they have committed will always be remembered. Their crimes against humanity are so sick, so vile, so bad that not even history can or will forgive them. It is a dirty job that no one has to do, yet they choose to do it, and that makes it worse.
The slave maker has been rendered extinct. It is now time to do the same to the executioner.
*from “Malcolm X on Afro-American History”
In Struggle From Death Row
At San Quentin Prison
Kevin Cooper