Black peoples toiled on the pyramids, offered prayers to the sun-god, and served with distinction in the state bureaucracy. In the fourth chapter Behind the Cotton Curtains, Bennett tells the reader that for some 200 years Negroes were held in bondage in America. Behind the Cotton Curtains, four million human beings were systematically deprived of every right of personality. The slaves worked on the plantations which varied in size from large to small. Men, women, and children all worked on the plantation all day.
Children didn t go to the fields until the age of six or seven.
Young workers were broken in as water boys or in the trash gang. The men and women who were healthy and quick worked in the field picking cotton, watermelons, sweet potatoes, sugar canes, corn, tobacco leaves or rice. Women mostly dug ditches, cut down trees and plowed fields. The old and weak, despite their condition, still had to work. Since they weren t quick enough to keep up in the fields, they fed the live stock, cleaned the yard, and took care of the sick.