1) To prevent the enslaved from eating fruits such as apples, pineapples, oranges, cashews, bananas, plantains and sugarcanes etc while harvesting them, yet they were made to work consistently in all the plantation farms.
2) To stop the enslaved from chanting our African spiritual songs. Not only that those our spiritual and war songs affected the slave masters, they also motivated some enslaved to rebel and fight back, not minding losing their lives.
3) To stop the enslaved from teaching our African local dialects (languages) to their children…thereby destroying our dialects, and forced them to learn foreign languages.
4) Last but not the least, to starve enslaved as a punishment in the slave camps. The mask prevented them from eating or drinking. Sometimes the slave masters would force an apple (a whole) into the mouths of the enslaved before they wore the metal mask on them with the padlocks so that they couldn’t talk.
📸 GettyImages
-The Modern History