The Willie Lynch Letter: Aka the Making of a Slave (Annotated)

Book excerpt: The Willie Lynch Letter, aka The Making of a Slave, is one of the most controversial texts in African-American studies.It was purportedly written by Willie Lynch, a British West Indies plantation owner, and given to a group of Virginia slaveowners as a masterplan to keep Blacks enslaved -- not just physically but mentally as well -- using such tactics as pitting on slave against the other. Lynch, in his letter, says by using these tactics for just one year it will keep slaves mentally in chains for at least 300 years.Modern historians have asserted that the letter is a hoax, but most still agree that it's a text worth reading as it points out the different divides in the African-American community that seem specifically designed to keep the race from throwing off mental chains that impede communal progress.Includes foreword by Karen E. Quinones Miller, author of An Angry-Ass Black WomanIncludes excerpt from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave