This metal mask was used during slavery for 3 main reasons:

1) To prevent the slaves 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 slaves from chanting our African spiritual songs. Not only that those our spiritual and war songs affected the slave masters, it also motivated some slaves to rebel and fight back not minding losing their lives.

3) To stop slaves form teaching our African local dialects (languages) to their children…whereby destroyed our dialects, and forced them to learn foreign languages.

Sometimes the slave masters would forced an apple (a whole 🍎) into the mouths of slaves before they wore the metal mask on them with the padlocks so that they couldn’t talk.

This is just one of the thousands of inhumane treatments our ancestors went through for centuries in the hands of those invaders. Source: Njoku Anayo