Promised Land By Elizabeth Bethel

During the Reconstruction era, the idea of freedom could have many different meanings. Everyday factors that we don't often think about today such as the color of our skin, where we were born, and whether or not we own land determined what limitations were placed on the ability to live our life to the fullest. To dig deeper into what freedom meant for different individuals during this time period, I analyzed three primary sources written by those who experienced this first hand. These included “Excerpts from The Black Codes of Mississippi” (1865), “Jourdan Anderson to his old master” (1865), and “Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan in Congressional Hearing” (1872). The ability to have absolute freedom is a common theme in these three documents. Freedom means more than just having the independence to make your own decisions and pursuing your own happiness. The hopes of Reconstruction were to create

The reconstruction period was a time of cause and effect. It was a time when in order to rebuild the strength of society economically, socially, and politically after a the loss of life and stability in the civil war. In the socratic seminar we discussed how the during the reconstruction period the goal was to ‘fix’ the south as in the eyes of the government, they were the cause of the problem.

The thirteenth amendment stated that all former slaves were granted freedom. The reconstruction period, “did create the essential constitutional foundation for further advances in the quest for equality”. It laid the building blocks for the future building for civil rights not just for blacks but women and other minorities. Former slaves, “ found comfort in their family and in the churches they established”. Blacks took community in each other and bonded over the mutual idea of freedom . They found each others company comforting a new way rather than the idea of fear bring them together. African Americans also, “enthusiastically participated in politics”. Black happily voted and became equal, by law, to whites because their voices were heard when it came to the

African-American historian W.E.B Dubois illustrated how the Civil War brought the problems of African-American experiences into the spotlight. As a socialist, he argued against the traditional Dunning interpretations and voiced opinions about the failures and benefits of the Civil War era, which he branded as a ‘splendid failure’. The impacts of Civil War era enabled African-Americans to “form their own fraternal organizations, worship in their own churches and embrace the notion of an activist government that promoted and safeguarded the welfare of its citizens.” Thus black people developed a social consensus and reached levels of social integration once hindered by the horrors of slavery. However, in his book Black Reconstruction in America (1935), Dubois observed how racial divisions amongst white and black laborers prevented them uniting against the white property-owning individuals. Ultimately, he argues

Following the ending of the Civil War in 1865, America was in an era known as the Reconstruction. The Reconstruction lasted until 1877. Citizens were attempting to rebuild our nation following one of the deadliest war in American History. In this time, the Fourteenth Amendment and Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution were ratified. Although slaves were freed, African Americans still faced intense racial prejudice and discrimination. This led to continued to tensions between not only the north and south but also the blacks and the whites in America. According to The Unfinished Nation, the per capita income of African Americans increase from about one-quarter to about one-half of the per capita income of White citizens (365). Sadly certain

Although former slaves had been freed, they were still facing many struggles in free life. America’s plan for reconstruction had good intent, but did not give African Americans the equality they deserved. From segregation and voting laws to sharecropping, reconstruction did not turn out to be the success it had the potential to be. Many years later, we are

In September 18, 1895, Booker T. Washington gave an address, that was known as the “Atlanta Compromise”, at the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition. The fact that Mr. Washington was invited to speak to this all-white southern audience, was itself a historic event. In his speech, Washington made the argument that the African-American people should not ask for the right to vote, they would not retaliate against any racist behavior, and they would tolerate segregation and discrimination. Washington strongly argued that African Americans to get rid of Reconstruction-era notions of social equality. Booker T. Washington gave a couple proposals during this speech in Atlanta. Instead, he argued, most Southern blacks should pursue

After the ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, life did not get significantly easier for emancipated slaves. Despite being free from slavery, African Americans in the United States remained figuratively enslaved within social realms due to several restrictions on every-day activities. Plessy v. Ferguson established the regulation of “separate but equal” in 1896 for whites and colored people, which was a significant aspect of American societies for decades. While the term “separate” was virtually always enacted in amenities such as bathrooms, schools, and entertainment facilities, equality of these separate services was certainly not the case. The

Professor Khalil Girban Muhammad gave an understanding of the separate and combined influences that African Americans and Whites had in making of present day urban America. Muhammad’s lecture was awakening, informative and true, he was extremely objective and analytical in his ability to scan back and forth across the broad array of positive and negative influences. Muhammad described all the many factors during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries since the abolition of slavery and also gave many examples of how blackness was condemned in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Muhammad was able to display how on one hand, initial limitations made blacks seem inferior, and various forms of white prejudice made things worse. But on the other hand, when given the same education and opportunities, there are no differences between black and white achievements and positive contributions to society. His lecture gave an insight of the way that we think, talk and respond to African American criminality.

Pertaining to the rights of African Americans a new south did not appear after the reconstruction. While they were “free” they were often treated harshly and kept in a version of economic slavery by either their former masters or other white people in power. Sharecropping and the crop-lien system often had a negative impact on both the black and white tenants keeping them in debt with the owner. Jim Crow laws, vigilantes and various means of disfranchisement became the normal way of life in the South. It was believed that white people were superior to black people and when they moved up in politics or socially they were harassed and threatened. There were various activists that held different beliefs on how to obtain equality some of which

Edmund Drago’s book provides a look into one of the first black educational institutions, The Avery Normal Institute in Charleston Virginia. This book discusses how this school was made too elitist, due in large part to the high-class nature of Charleston, Virginia, which segregated the students from the white people of the town as well as the black people of the town. They were separated from the white people because, while they were more elite than the common black citizen, and getting an education, they were also black, so many southern people did not want to socialize with them. Black citizens who did not attend the Avery Normal Institute were not fond of the students there because they struck them as too elitist. Drago’s argument is that the elite nature of this school allowed for the development of black leaders, who were crucial to the later transformation of the town and the destruction of racial barriers so many years later.

America is often considered the land of opportunities, a place where people can have a fresh start, a clean slate. America is a land that is made up of immigrants. Over the centuries America has been a place where people dream to live in, however the American dream wasn 't as perfect as believed; there were issues of race inferiority, slavery and social inequality amongst other problems. When a person arrives into a new society he has a difficult task ahead of him- to assimilate into that new society- which includes the economical, cultural, political and social aspects. In the following paper I will discuss how the African American, who came as slaves to America, has fought over the centuries to achieve equality in a white society that discriminated them. I will show how abolitionists like Fredrick Douglass and W.E.B Du Bois used literature to fight the preconceptions about the black people.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large portion of Americans were restricted from civil and political rights. In American government in Black and White (Second ed.), Paula D. McClain and Steven C. Tauber and Vanna Gonzales’s power point slides, the politics of race and ethnicity is described by explaining the history of discrimination and civil rights progress for selective groups. Civil rights were retracted from African Americans and Asian Americans due to group designation, forms of inequality, and segregation. These restrictions were combatted by reforms such as the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc. Although civil and political

How did the circumstances for African-Americans (and potentially other minorities) change in the 20th C., after the establishment of the Jim Crow system

Students will be required to read and evaluate the cultural and social factors of each monograph. Additionally students will assess the historiographical progression of cultural studies in American History. Considering the cultural history of each monograph will assist students in identifying themes that contributed to cultural changes in America’s past. (Needs one more sentence)