In the book ‘Trouble in Mind,’ author Leon F. Litwack illustrates the hard times of slaves during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During this time there were major hardships that African Americans had to encounter; lynching, racism, and the fight for freedom. Litwack doing his research on slave hard times since 1961 studied how hard the Jim Crow laws were mentally, and physically hard for African Americans. The book, ‘Trouble in Mind’ starts at the end of Reconstruction when the idea of whites “Redemption” spread along the south. This caused new dreams of citizenship for African Americans and freedom to die of an ungrateful death, and most likely the hardest time for African American life since slavery.…
Discussion Assignment #4 (Reconstruction Video) In class we watched the Reconstruction video, my group discussed parts of the video that we found intriguing. The Reconstruction is a period after the Civil War which new rights towards African Americans began, however during that period of time the president Andrew Johnson was against the African-American’s being equally as free as whites. Our group found Andrew Johnson to be the most interesting part of the video as well as Jefferson Davis taking the seat of the former confederate president.…
Although the North was progressing with the integration of black people, the South was holding out strong going against integration. The South did a lot of things to hold segregation to their tradition. They were scared to change. This essay will show how the South lived before the Emmett Till case and the Civil Rights’ Movement, also what the South did to resist integration, and lastly how the town of Money,Mississippi, worked together so two killers did not get convicted for a murder of a black forteen-year old boy.…
In C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Woodward talks about the “Twilight Zone” which was the period of myths. Woodward was the first Historian to write about race relations in the time period between 1860 and 1965. Woodward’s purpose of writing this book was to show that segregation even by law has always been prevalent, and to “make the attempt to relate to the origins and development of Jim Crowism to the bewildering rapid changes that have occurred in race relations” (C.V.W. 2nd Preface pg. 17). Woodward’s thesis throughout his book was that racial segregation, which was later known as Jim Crow in the South, did not begin immediately after the Civil War in 1865; moreover that race relations changed in the 1890s and…
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…
An Analysis of Southern Horrors and Other Writings In the period immediately following the Civil War, racial tensions were extremely high in the South. During this period of Reconstruction, the majority of white citizens still fostered deep hatred towards recently freed African Americans. As a result, lynch law prevailed. Hundreds of African Americans were viciously murdered, as the government failed to step in and stop the killings.…
In his article, The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates insists that “until Americans reckon with their compounding moral debts, America will never be whole”. He writes that after four hundred thirty-five years of racial injustice towards the African American community, the American government owes them. The slavery and slave-like conditions people were put in is something The United States should and will be ashamed of until the end of time. The horrific experiences and tragedies people endured are something that will hopefully never happen again. To think of the innocent who were lynched, raped, assaulted, and found guilty of crimes that they did not commit could make anyone’s stomach turn.…
Also, when the “Redeemers” or “Bourbons” won public office, they wanted to undo the social and economic reforms in the South and bring back the old South, where blacks had no rights of any kind and were just slaves with no freedom. And during the first years of the 20th century, Jim Crow Laws were passed and it allowed legal segregation. With this law, “Blacks and whites could not ride together in the same railroad cars, sit in the same waiting rooms, use the same washrooms, eat in the same restaurants, or sit in the same theaters” (Brinkley, 397). All in all, “…the Jim Crow laws also stripped blacks of many of the modest social, economic, and political gains they had made in the late nineteenth century” (Brinkley, 397). Reconstruction generally speaking was a failure.…
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.…
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…
After the Civil war, the United States had to welcome a formerly slave population and a formerly rebellious population back into the country. Just as slavery was the center of the Civil war, center to Reconstruction was the effort to ensure that former slaves had the right to breathe full meaning into their newly acquired freedom, and to claim their rights as citizens. The Reconstruction period, under the guidance of President Andrew Jackson, was a time to make reunion possible. With their newly founded freedom, African Americans were, supposedly, equal to white men. Freedom, the ability to express what you want and when you want to without care or concern of other’s opinion, was not always given the way it should have been.…
1865 was the start of a brand new period in American history; Reconstruction. After the Civil War, the United States was left in ruins so the North helped the South rebuild and make it easier for them to rejoin the Union. Northerners and Republicans tried to help, but their efforts weren 't very successful. Reconstruction was a failure. During Reconstruction, African Americans gained many rights , but these rights didn 't last very long.…
America's current battle with racism is an unfortunate example of when history "repeats itself." The issues regarding racial inequality were confronted in the Civil War, then again during the Reconstruction era. Despite the efforts of both these events, racial conflicts still exist today. The Civil war is taught in schools to be the conflict that ended with the abolishment of slavery. While this marked a turning point in American history, racist belief systems did not disappear.…
As black suffrage lost political support, it seemed many individuals began to notice how difficult it would truly be to integrate the estimated four million freed slaves into society as an American citizen. In a lecture of Slavery by Another Name: The Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon, explains how growing up he remembered being told about the infamous 13,14,15 amendments and how Lincoln freed all the slaves with passing of the Emancipation Proclamation. However, this is far from the end of slavery he goes further to claim this simplified version of the history regarding slavery is the same history people are taught and never question. This book focuses primarily on exposing the truth behind the true end to slavery marked as December 11th 1941 in the author’s opinion because, it is when finally anti-lynching laws took into effect and it became possible to investigate allegations of slavery and involuntary…
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…