Sold Down The River Analysis

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Mark Hayhurst’s film “Sold Down The River” is an analysis of slavery in the North and South after the Civil War and black emancipation. During the film, many examples are given regarding the ideology of Southern whites after blacks were emancipated. After the decimation of the agriculturally dependent South in the war, the power of the white man was further deconstructed without the workforce of slaves. White men no longer had a cheap and effective labour force to work the fields, and this created significant cultural issues. In an attempt to regain control over the “freedmen”, many tactics were used such as sharecropping, Jim Crow, and lynching. Although these tactics were very successful, this point in American history proves to be a very …show more content…
Along with the South, Northerners did not like the idea of land redistribution either. The argument was that if the blacks were given back land in the South, that they would also demand equal treatment in the North. With the oil industry exploitation and expansion, the North eventually began a new relationship with the South: do whatever you please, as long as you permit us to develop industry as well as keeping things quiet for investments to succeed. As these conditions were met, Northern businessmen agreed to disregard the South’s attitude towards blacks. This allowed the South to quietly set its own agenda. The North ultimately surrendered its moral commitment to protect blacks. In turn, power returned to the Southern states, and the White men were back on the path to supremacy. Cotton still had to be picked in the South, and whites wanted it picked as cheaply as possible. The result was Sharecropping. Sharecropping was a workaround of the law to reinforce slave labour. As blacks resisted the perils of sharecropping, the landlords turned to lynching. Prior to reconstruction, slaves were not lynched because they were considered valuable property. Now that blacks were not considered “property”, they were unable to be sold or owned. Because of this, they were openly lynched, tortured, and

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