Blood Terrain Clinton Analysis

Improved Essays
The academic journal article up for reading and discussion for this week is titled Blood Terrain: Freedwomen, Sexuality, and Violence During Reconstruction by Catherine Clinton. In this brief twenty page work, Clinton narrows her focus on the history of the Reconstruction era to the undersold experience of black freedwomen who underwent monstrous and routine sexual abuse and rape by white southerners. My initial impression of this article is that it succinctly captures the rotten history of America by explicitly exploring the experiences of sexual violence against black women during reconstruction, a history that implicitly the American public knows, or at least feels. The purpose of Clinton’s article is to convey and expose how white supremacism or racism basis has …show more content…
Countering the conventional viewpoint, Clinton dispute how inclusion of gender and sexuality into the history of the Reconstruction era is never too late, exemplified by this article. Nevertheless, in my opinion this article is written with a very academic voice and form. I would recommend that Clinton takes the time to give the reader greater context to the historic institutions such as the Freedman's Beuro, and reorganizing her arguments chronologically to simplify the readers interpretation. Given these improvements, I recommend this article to amateur historians, middle to older age students, social service workers, and political figures. This article could be used to contribute to the historical record of the Reconstruction Era by focusing on the under-told experience of black women, which gives perspective to the historical context of the modern day, and how these described tactics are still used by white supremacist to suppress non-white voice and

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Eric Foner’s “A Short History of Reconstruction” is an updated, abridged edition of “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution.” This book redefines how the Reconstruction Era is viewed, in ways historians have not done before. Foner chronologically starts with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to validate his statement that “Reconstruction was not only a specific time period, but also the beginning of an extended historical process: the adjustment of American society to the end of slavery.” Starting his novel with this allows him to stress “the Proclamation’s importance in uniting…grass-roots black activity and the newly empowered national state” and state that this period is the beginning of “the adjustment of American society to…

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ida B Wells Summary

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Ida B. Wells & The Reconstruction of Race The Reconstruction, also known as the period after the Civil War, lasted from 1865-1877 and was one of the most significant eras in American history. In addition to the South attempting to rejoin the Union, a woman named Ida B. Wells was an activist against lynching and led the early Civil Rights Movement during the reconstruction. In his novel, ‘They Say’ Ida B. Wells and the Reconstruction of Race, James West Davidson invites readers to experience the life of African Americans during the Reconstruction and why Ida B. Wells crusaded against lynching. Ida B. Wells was born on July 16, 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi raised by the well-respected James and Elizabeth Wells. The Wells became former…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Deborah Gray White, author of Ar’n’t I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, courageously plunges into the research and understanding of the slave experience through race and gender. The overall slave experience of the antebellum South is often represented by the male experience. For the first time, White brings forth an understanding of slave life through the female lens. White reasons that the female slave experience differed from the male slave experience due to the assigned gender roles.…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Paula Giddings, in “Defending Her Name,” notably discusses the impact of the construction of black female hypersexuality and how this relates to the “Cult of True Womanhood”; a discussion that can be applicable to Professor Lipsitz’s insight on the “phobic fantasies of monstrous Blackness.” Giddings says that because black women were constructed in this way, they were seen as outside this “Cult of True Womanhood.” This means that they were seen as untrue women, a devastating myth that was used as justification for the rape of black women by white males. These myths of black men and women as monstrous, hypersexual, and deviant, are part of the legacy of slavery (Professor Lipsitz calls it the “afterlife of slavery”) and are responsible for one crisis after another; from the lynchings that Ida B. Wells studied to the shooting of Michael Brown.…

    • 1010 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In "The Sexualization of Reconstruction Politics: White Women and Black Men in the South after the Civil War," the author, Martha Hodes examines white southerner 's toleration of sexual relationships between white females and black males, post-Civil War. Hodes explores the entwined relationship between black male sexuality and political power and demonstrates a timeline of decreasing toleration whites had of sexual liaisons between black males and white females. The author examines the antebellum south, where sexual relations between black men and white women were tolerated because racism was over-shadowed by a more pressing issue, Classism. The political metamorphosis driven by the termination of slavery increased the political power…

    • 1071 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Within the field of history, perspective is vital; it influences what or who is remembered, how it is transcribed, and how it is analyzed. Addressing the concept of perspective, Linda Kerber and Jane Sherron De Hart, editors of the 1991 edition Women’s America: Refocusing the Past, outline Gerda Lerner’s four steps of women’s history writing, and then proceed to illustrate a brief history of American women and the perceptions that surround them. In particular, they focus on the erasure of their history, invisible labor, and the undervaluation of women’s work. Judith Carney, in her essay “The African Women Who Preceded Uncle Ben: Black Rice in Carolina,” echoes many of the tenants set forth by the introduction, but also goes beyond to tackle…

    • 1317 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Civil War Dbq

    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In a time period where corrupt politicians were making side deals, Reconstruction took many perspectives in promoting successes, but also leaving space in failing to protect the rights of African Americans. What this paper will attempt to analyze is the extent of the successes and legacies of Reconstruction, and the legacy Reconstruction plagued for minority groups in the United States following the Civil…

    • 1302 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ida B. Wells-Barnett chronicles the gruesome attack on the civil rights of a people who have suffered far too much at the hands of a corrupt system in her work Mob Rule in New Orleans. In these retelling of the events that occurred on July 24th, 1900, it is evident that justice, in the hands of a racist and oppressive force, can never truly be justice. The most appalling realization that any reader of this work may come to is that one-hundred and eighteen years later, in our current American climate, the crimes committed against black Americans and other people of color still occur, and even more horrifying is the politicized, often racist media response and coverage that follows these events. As I moved through this text, I was continually disturbed by the experiences that three malicious bluecoats caused for countless African American members of their community, and how at the end of the day the perpetrators of murder and crime got off scot-free. Through this analysis, it is my goal to connect the past with the present to understand the racism that still affects our systems of government and police forces.…

    • 1211 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Marlene Choi September 25, 2016 SOC 222: The Family Instructor: Naomi Gerstel TA: Yolanda Wiggins 9:05am-9:55am In the reading “Reproduction in Bondage,” from Killing the Black Body, by Dorothy Roberts, the author discusses the conditions black females had to endure during 1800s. During the 19th century, white men dominated the majority of Africans in slavery. Most importantly, black procreation helped sustain slavery and gave slave masters an economic motivation to govern black women’s reproductive lives.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    During the civil war and reconstruction eras, America’s main concern was giving rights to people of color. In the chaos the country forgot that women need rights too. In today’s society, women and people of color have the same rights as white men, but unfortunately there is still an issue of equality and justice. In theory we are all the same, but in practice, white men still have all the power. This is why literature concerning these issues is as relevant today as it was in the mid-1800s.…

    • 1329 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the paper the intention is to break down and analyze the book, “Blues Legacies and Black Feminism”, by author Angela Y. Davis. The authors background will be introduced with a basic biography followed by an in-depth analysis of the author’s educational background to give the author credibility to this topic. Mrs. Angel Yvonne Davis was born on the 26th day of January in Birmingham, Alabama. She was born in a time period in one of the most known segregated area in the south. She grew up in an area known as “Dynamite Hill” because of violent attacks on black families that moved into that area.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Equality has always been a serious issue regards racial segregation in the South of the United States, especially in the Jim Crow Era. African-Americans were dehumanized and considered inferior compared to White Americans. They were treated unfairly and restricted in public places for their rights and resources were stripped. Based on the two autobiographical memoirs, Black boy and Separate Pasts, the authors have expressed their own opposite respective experiences of Blacks and Whites to show how the Constitution rights were overturned.…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The lives’ of African Americans were altered considerably after the Civil War ended in 1865. Before the Civil War began in 1861, slavery and the limitations placed on both free and enslaved black people was part of life, but when slavery was abolished in 1865 by the passing of the 13th amendment; a new era was arriving. The Era of Reconstruction after the Civil War presented impacted the lives of African Americans positively in many ways, but it must be recognized that there were negative consequences as well. In this essay, both the positive and negative impacts of the changes brought about after the Civil War will be examined. When the Civil War concluded, and Slavery abolished in 1865, the African American people, who lived in the South, were ushered into an era where they had the opportunity to choose their destiny.…

    • 1031 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even upon their laggard release from slavery in 1865, freedmen were far from equality, justice, and most importantly, freedom. Not only is the meaning of freedom extrapolated by Eric Foner within his textbook, Give Me Liberty! An American History, it is also analyzed. Throughout Chapter 15, Foner analyzes post-civil war oppressions and injustices placed not only on black men but also including black women. To maintain credibility…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With brutal violence and injustice reasoning, it marked the Reconstruction era to be one of the most violent periods in history. Looking from the African Americans perspective, the period is simply a reenactment of slavery - beatings, whippings, and deaths are a normality. This era purpose was to restore the Union and enforce egalitarianism, however, it was enacted a reign of terror, defend white supremacy, and maintain a strict racial hierarchy. In addition, the feeling of racism and discrimination was still deeply entwined with the people’s beliefs such that the two…

    • 1621 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays