Short And Long Term Effects Of Slavery In The 1800's

Slavery was not completely the way that the media and base level history books have depicted. During the mid 1800’s, a rift split America apart over the issue of Slavery. When people look back on this divide, many tend to overlook the different stories these former slaves had. Despite Slavery being depicted as just plantation labor, it has had many different forms and long lasting effects such as African American troops, lynchings, police brutality, and sharecropping. At the onset of the Civil War, Slave owners weren’t completely sure what to do with their Slaves. Many thought that it would be ridiculous to let them fight against the people actively trying to free them. Unfortunately though, as former slave Doc Quinn recalls it, “most of

Despite its morbid appearance, lynchings were often held as a spectacle event for all people to see. Richard Wright, a descendant from slavery, wrote a powerful poem detailing the grim emotions of being lynched. Wright described seeing a “vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood” (Wright). Richard Wright wanted everyone to see how the mass killings affected the lives of black citizens in America. He successfully shows how the situation with lynching in America wasn’t truly much better than being enslaved. Another way white supremacists have claimed power of the African American community is through police brutality. Ever since people of color were allowed in America, the police have actively been against them. It was no coincidence that the first police force was created to catch runaway slaves. In the book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi expresses what it felt like to be pulled over: “ I sat there in Terror” he stated, “I had added the warnings of my teachers” and “I’d learned about PG County through reporting and reading the papers” (Coates, p. 75). Ta-Nehisi would go on to replay in his head the numerous times that a fellow person of color had recently been murdered by the police and had the police get off scot-free. Despite slavery being

The idea of sharecropping, where former slaves took out a loan and a land from their former masters, required that the masters would still receive some of the profits of their farm until they paid their debt. Abbot had a story about his time sharecropping; their families entire stock was burned, so, as Abbot puts it, his former master “had to take our land back and sell it to make up for the four or five hundred bales of cotton that got burned up” (Abbot). He continues by commenting that “we stayed on and sharecropped with him” (Abbot). Silas Abbot’s story is one that many families can relate to. As it has done here, sharecropping is generally an endless cycle of debt, all leading to a massive profit for the former master. In the end, these families are still performing back breaking labor on a farm and giving their money to a white man who controls their land. Outside of sharecropping, many former slaves moved up north to try to start a new life. Though, through the use of Jim Crow laws and redlining, many sectors of lower class neighborhoods were filled with these citizens. Stricken with poverty, these families would do anything to succeed in life; consequently, it created a completely dangerous environment for the people living and growing up there. Ta-Nehisi remembers his fear as a child: “I saw it in their customs of war. I was no