Mock Trial I Reflection

 I think I would make a great lawyer when I am older because I enjoyed building and presenting my case in this activity. Not only did I learn a lot in the mock trial but I also think that it improved my public speaking skills. The mock trial was a little bit different than the town hall because of the research, but I thought that presenting both was very similar. We got to see each of the persecuting sides present one at a time, with my group defending John Mann going second.  

Hearing the side going against John Mann was very intriguing because they said a lot of stuff that I would say if I was actually persecuting John Mann. Some of the fascinating things I heard were how many other countries in the world abolished slavery decades before the United States did. For example, I never knew that Great Britain and Spain abolished slavery almost 30 years before America. Another thing I learned was that most white people in the states were not as wealthy as people thought. Many of them were just as poor as African Americans and they were just a step above them in society because they actually had rights. Not only that but a lot of whites worked on plantations as indentured servants and never made enough money for them to ever actually make their own living. This struck me because I believed that the majority of white people were much more wealthy than African American slaves. 

Some of the EOTO groups also gave an excellent description of the many important documents, moments, and laws in the building for or fight against slavery. Things like the Missouri Compromise, Emancipation Proclamation, Amistad Mutiny, Fugitive Slave Act, and many more. To sum it up I believed that the De Facto Slavery Era was a key time in the building of America and I learned a lot about the horrid history of slavery.