This is such an awesome piece. Thanks @humanearl for writing a post on a topic so dear to the African race and culture.

This was a law in Alabama, 1833, section 33,

'Any free person of color who shall write for any slave a pass or free paper, on conviction thereof, shall receive for every such offense, thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, and leave the state of Alabama within thirty days thereafter...'

Source - Wikipedia

All they wanted was for there to be no form of communication. They first took away the indigenous language of the slaves, and then took away any form of communication between them.

The languages that slaves spoke originally were varied; there was no single language that they all spoke. Some examples include the Yaruba, Igbo, and Hausa languages, all of which were from tribes in present day Nigeria, which happened to be where most slaves going to the 13 colonies and the West Indies came from.

Every slave importing country/colony in the new world had differing manners of "integrating" slaves into their system. In the US it was common practice for slave owners to outlaw native languages and religion. There are various reasons for this but the main two being that it was believed that they would be more easily controlled and produce children (more slaves), and the fear of revolt (native languages cold be used for slaves to organize themselves).

It's so unfortunate that all these were founded in selfish reasons.

But am so grateful to God that no matter how much they try to take it all away, they can never take away our skin color. That's our heritage that no man can take away.

Thanks for such a wonderful piece.