American slavery remembrances were documented during the 1930's. African-Americans who had been American slaves were interviewed in all of the southern states (over to Texas) and in a few northern states. People who were used as breeders told what happened to them. They spoke of their lives as children who began the work of pulling weeds in the fields when they were only toddlers. These former American slaves reminisced about past loves who were sold away. They laughed about the jokes and the corn shucking enjoyments. They finally were able to talk about what had once been taboo. Myrtle Magargel wrote 100 years later that a Mrs. Mary Way told her, "Many a black man has been hidden in my father's barn and sometimes the slaveholders would come and work pitchforks around through the hay to find their slaves." Way, whose father was Jesse Underwood. added that "the underground railroad wasn't talked around very much. Folks had to know who they could trust and be pretty sly. But lots and lots of runaway slaves hid in my father's barn at Unionville." She added, "they were taken after dark in a closed carriage to the next station wherever it might be. Some were in Bellefonte and some in Halfmoon. The slaves came for the most part from the Ohio and Juniata Rivers. They travelled mostly by water." Yet we must never forget that these same "welfare capitalist" plantations in the Deep South were essentially ruled by terror. Even the most kindly and humane masters knew that only the threat of violence could force gangs of field hands to work from dawn to dusk "with the discipline," as one contemporary observer put it, "of a regular trained army." Frequent public floggings reminded every slave of the penalty for inefficient labor, disorderly conduct, or refusal to accept the authority of a superior. Slaves that worked and lived on plantations were commonly punished. This punishment could come from the plantation owner or master, his wife, children (white males), and most often by the overseer. Slaves were punished with a variety of objects and instruments. Some of these included: whips, placed in chains and shackles, various contraptions such as metal collars, being hanged, and even forced to walk a treadmill. Those who inflicted pain upon the slaves also used weapons such as knives, guns, field tools, and objects found nearby. The Whip was the most common form of punishment performed on a slave. One slave said that, “The only punishment that I ever heard or knew of being administered slaves was whipping,” although he knew several that had been beaten to death for offenses such as sassing a white person, hitting another negro, fussing, or fighting in their quarters. Slave overseers were authorized to whip and brutalize non-compliant slaves. According to an account by a plantation overseer to a visitor, "Some Negroes are determined never to let a white man whip them and will resist you, when you attempt it; of course you must kill them in that case". A former slave describes his witness to females being whipped. “They usually screamed and prayed, though a few never made a sound.” In order to really understand and remember them and what they had been through we should feel what they felt, what they lived, simbolisticaly speaking. The Slavery Now Memorial is design to do so. It is design to guide you through the feelings of a slave in his life: fear, pain, uncertainty, agony,constrain, suffer. The memorial contain 3 volumes with titled walls that gave you the impression of construction and the light, the hole light is comming through the roof so that you see it, but you can’t touch it. In the first volume you enter through a big door and there is water on the floor so that you wonder thats wrong, what is this all about. The sound of pressing the water under your shoes and the construction of the wall restlessnes you and trample down you. Forward you sign out through a smaller door. The colidor between the volumes are bringing you nearby your life: you can see it, but you can’t touch it. You have to cover all the memorial in order to go back to your life. Going forward through another smaller door you enter the second volume that represents the life of a slave. Firstly you have to side step wire that represents the work of pulling weeds in the fields when slaves were only toddlers. After growing a little bit they start have responsable activities and when they made a mistake they were punished with the whip, so the next level into the memorial is represent by a forest of whips: you have to protect your self. The last step is the one that ends life: hanging represent by scaffold himself. You pass another even smaller door see your world and enter the last volume to commemorate. Here on a wall that is in front of you is flowing water. The water acumulates in a special area on the surface of the floor, but you are not steping on it anymore. Around the water is a line of candles in memoriam slaves. On the walls the list with slaves names is writen on pieces of granit, well polished so that you can see your shadow through the names of the deads. Here the light is comming only from the candles and from the gap in the slab from were is comming the water also from the basin of water from above. Behind the wall with flowing water is the stair that takes you to your world were you are free and no one with take that from you.