2014山东卷C
【语篇解读】Elizabeth Freeman生下来就是一个奴隶，为了获得自由她进行了不懈的抗争，最后终于获得了梦寐以求的自由。本文还讲到了人们对她的评价。 Elizabeth Freeman was born about 1742 to African American parents who were slaves. At the age of six months she was acquired, along with her sister, by John Ashley, a wealthy Massachusettsslaveholders. She became known as “Mumbet” or “Mum Bett.”For nearly 30 years Mumbet served the Ashley family. One day, Ashley’s wife tried to strike Mumbet’s sister with a spade. Mumbet protected her sister and took the blow instead. Furious, she left the house and refused to come back. When the Ashleys tried to make her return, Mumbet consulted a lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick. With his help, Mumbet sued(起诉) for her freedom.While serving the Ashleys, Mumbet had listened to many discussions of the newMassachusettsconstitution. If the constitution said that all people were free and equal, then she thought it should apply to her. Eventually, Mumbet won her freedom---- the first slave inMassachusettsto do so under the new constitution.Strangely enough, after the trial, the Ashleys asked Mumbet to come back and work for them as a paid employee. She declined and instead went to work for Segdewick. Mumbet died in 1829, but her legacy lived on in her many descendants(后裔). One of her great-grandchildren was W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the founder of the NAACP, and an important writer and spokesperson for African American civil rights.Mumbet’s tombstone still stands in theMassachusettscemetery where she was buried. It reads, in part: “She was born a slave and remained a slave and remained a slave for nearly thirty years. She could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she had no superior or equal.”
