African Americans After Reconstruction

Reading this chapter really made me realize how much of history I didn’t know and had come to assume happened just based on my judgements of America's past. The idea of the Founding Fathers being racist slaveholders or the whitewashing that happens in history weren’t new to me but the hard facts about how bad it is and the things they said and did stopped me in my reading. Multiple times I covered my mouth with my hand in shock and reread or read aloud a sentence I couldn’t believe was true. I just can't imagine being so ignorant and thinking you're better than someone simply because of what they look like. I’m really happy I got to read this so I have a better understanding of what exactly minorities, particularly Black and African American people, had to go through.

Reading this brought back feelings similar to those I got last year reading a history green group about Woodrow Wilson.

Even though I’m aware of how unfair white people have treated minorities in America it still shocks me when I find out people believed that African Americans wanted to be slaves or that simply the color of your skin decided how smart you could be. The moment in the text that made me the most sad was reading about young Black and African American students who had been lied to about they race's role in government during the Reconstruction period. As stated in the text it can bring them to “doubt their own capability, since their race had “messed up.”” (Loewen, 1995) History has so much weight in how we think about ourselves and those around us so seeing students be presented with whitewashed lies that tell them that white people are some how superior, is not only disgusting but clearly a huge factor in today's racisms. I’ve never had a history textbook so I can’t say for sure what they are like but I hope in the future we can implement laws so that you can’t beat around the bush when it comes to the treatment of minorities in our

country.
One thing I would like to learn more about is the period around the Civil War. In the text it said that “race relations in the united states systematically worsened for almost half a century.” (Loewen, 1995) I still struggle with the idea of being able to believe people were somehow more racist after they fought and lost lives to get slaves freed in the South. I do believe it because it says it in the text and gives proof of the racism showing examples of Black and African American people who died due to white riots and lynchings all over America. Even with those facts it still seems hard to believe. The fact that our government “North and South, joined hands to restrict black civil and economic rights” (Loewen, 1995) angers me. Why would people free slaves only to proclaim them less than the white man still and practically give them the same rights they were given before. Obviously I'm happy the Civil War happened and we freed African Americans from the white slave owners but thinking about the states that had free African Americans prior to the war left me with lots of questions on how their racism continued to get worse.
I’m very happy that in a large way these openly racist actions are no longer norms for my race. It hasn’t been long since they started to go down considering my grandparents born in the late 1940 still say racist and offensive things almost every time I see them. I’m happy that I have gotten to read about the textbooks and what information was presented to them as children because I can clearly see how this, and other events happening during their upbringing, shaped their beliefs on minorities in America. Honestly if I had grown up at when they did who's to say I would have been any different from them. That’s why I’m grateful I get to know why we should be grateful to politicians like Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson but also know what made them bad people who encouraged much of the racism of their time periods.
Overall I’m grateful I got to read this chapter and learn more of the history that our government has decided isn’t important enough to include in the core curriculum of high school students. I want to look more into the events that happened during the Reconstruction period that lead to worsened racism. Though it was briefly mentioned that slave owners really did run the government for a larger period of time I still wonder why after the abolishment of slavery in America the government wouldn’t step in the try to help the people they’d just freed or even just stop the white riots. But these are questions that are too big to be answered in one chapter or one text. Hopefully throughout this semester I can continue to learn about what caused and continued this racism in the United States.