Due to the reconstruction which guaranteed equality before the law by the fourteenth amendment to all African Americans and also gave them the right to vote The fourteenth amendment did not allow any woman to vote many woman was upset that they wrote on the fourteenth amendment the word “men” that meaning no woman could vote. Women activist saw the reconstruction as the movement for women to claim their own emancipation Women were fighting hard to change the boundaries of American democracy be expanded to include them in it as well but no man would listen. Some African Americans were able to obtain farms of their own after the civil war. Many African Americans ended up as sharecroppers. (Foner2013).
Harsh Times Lives for African Americans were difficult. From separation to slavery African Americans endured a lot during the 1930s. There were people that made it either easy or hard for African Americans. There were people that stood up for African Americans. There were others who tried to make it harder on African Americans.
History central. 2011.web.18 February 2017. Bryan, Dan. “The Antebellum Home and Women’s Culture (part 2).” American History USA.
By preserving this aspect of herself, a woman was considered to be a suitable candidate for marriage. The ‘ideal’ wife was pure, submissive to their husbands and eager to serve her family, all qualities that suggested Paternalistic attitudes in society at the time. In context to the Antebellum South, Paternalism refers to the authoritative status of white men over other “subordinates or dependents in their supposed interest”, more specifically women and African Americans. It was not until these suppressed groups began working together to make their voices heard that this male dominated societal structure was effectively dismantled, and opportunities for women expanded beyond the prospects of marriage and motherhood. “In the moral, intellectual and physical cultivation of both sexes should we seek, as we can only find, the source and security of happiness and human virtue.
Her characters like Walter and Ruth are forced to live in a cramped house because they don’t have the money to move out. Walter has to work as a chauffeur driving people around all day for a low wage. Just like in that time period when African Americans could not get high paying jobs, this aided in the racial problem because it kept blacks from being able to move into white neighborhoods. Another method used to keep blacks out of White neighborhoods was contract buying. “When selling on contract, the speculator offered the home to a black purchaser for a relatively low downpayment- often several hundred dollars would suffice.
David Gaspar and Darlene Hine evaluate similarities and contrasts in the role of gender in different slave societies. Together, they create a novel on the topics of contrasts such as, Africa and the Americas, life and labor, and slavery, resistance, and freedom. What harsh conditions did these poor women go through? This book explains an African American woman’s life from experiencing slavery first-hand, to, at last, freedom. I will use examples of the harsh encounters Gaspar and Hine explain throughout this novel to support my main topic of my thesis; the theme of the corrupt power of slavery Harriet Jacob
Boydston writes, “But if middle-class women were encased in the image of the nurturant (and non laboring) mother, working-class women found that their visible inability to replicate that model worked equally hard against them.” The standard during the Antebellum period was a woman that didn’t do any kind of laborious task other than housework which was thought as being an enriching and awarding process. However, wage-earning women visibly were unable to live up to these new standards because they were forced out of their own gender sphere of domesticity just to find work. During the Antebellum period, it was believed to be a men’s sphere to work and men masculinity was based on the fact of being the main “breadwinner” for the family. By a woman going into this sphere they went against the formation of the two gender spheres.
Although slavery was declared over after the passing of the thirteenth amendment, African Americans were not being treated with the respect or equality they deserved. Socially, politically and economically, African American people were not being given equal opportunities as white people. They had certain laws directed at them, which held them back from being equal to their white peers. They also had certain requirements, making it difficult for many African Americans to participate in the opportunity to vote for government leaders. Although they were freed from slavery, there was still a long way to go for equality through America’s reconstruction plan.
In many cases, lower class women were able to get much higher wages, which enabled them to leave behind domestic service jobs that paid them much less. More so, the racialization of “domestic servitude” was primarily placed onto people of color, since African Americans were racially marginalized by white racism in the labor market. In one interview done by Fields, Lyn Childs defines the problem of gender binary thinking, which alienated women from “men’s work” in the industrial manufacturing sector of the American
Some people did not employ African Americans just because their race. Women were also treated unfairly during this time. Women are now allowed to vote during this time but they are thought to be housewives, mother and caregivers. It was hard for them to get decent jobs and were mostly rejected. Curley’s wife was treated very unfairly in this book.
The major role played by African American women in the reconstruction era is revised and illustrated in Tera W. Hunter’s To Joy my Freedom and Elsa Barkley Brown’s article Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom. Both documents analyze the participation and involvement of black women in social and political activities inside of their communities. To Joy my freedom, written by Tera W. Hunter provides an inner look into the lives and strives of African American women – mainly working class – living in Atlanta between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in the middle of one of the most belligerent environments created in the era of Reconstruction.
Black women are treated less than because of their ascribed traits, their gender and race, and are often dehumanized and belittled throughout the movie. They are treated like slaves and are seen as easily disposable. There are several moments throughout the film that show the racial, gender, and class inequalities. These moments also show exploitation and opportunity hoarding. The Help also explains historical context of the inequality that occurred during that time period.
In addition, they formed the majority of the suburban housewives who were doing far much better compared to the working-class women of color. In her work, Friedan discriminates African-American women to a large extent even in the light that many of them formed the category of working-class women. She actually, entirely underscores their contributions to the economy at the time. The reason why she left them out of the book could be because they never participated in the roles that she deemed “fulfilling” or those that she advocated. While Friedan generalizes the idea that all women were struggling to achieve equality with men at the time, she fails to understand that there were others who were not under the broad “category of Feminine Mystique.”
Please compare the three ladies' backgrounds from "Growing up White in the 1930s. " How do their backgrounds differ from Mrs. Barge's background from "Growing up Black in the 1930s"? Mrs. Barge was a poor, black, small-town girl sheltered from discrimination. Her parents were both slaves yet well educated. On the other hand, the three ladies were white members of "good families".
White women in slaveholding families in the south were one of the main forces behind the oppression of African American men and women. In society these white women held no real power but in the comfort of their domestic domains they were granted more power; so, these women took power where they could and became mistress to a slave. At a young age, they were taught how to manage slaves as well as being their master. In one case, a mistress had full power over the estate and managed it on her own without her husband’s help . Consequently, she held the power that she would not have had outside of the home.