by Chris Campbell
Laissez Faire Books
Araminta Harriet Ross was born into state-sanctioned slavery in Maryland in the 1820s.
As a child, she was beaten regularly at the hands of her “masters.” Yet, she grew up to be, despite constant attempts to break her spirit, consistently and relentlessly defiant.
As a teenager, for example, she once blocked a doorway so that a fellow slave could escape a severe beating. This sent her overseer into a fury. In a blind rage, he threw a two-pound weight at her head, fracturing her skull and condemning her to a lifetime of sporadic seizures and narcolepsy.