The Civil War was a fight against slavery in the mid to late 1800s. When the North won and abolished slavery, the South still had the mindset of slavery; they thought that black people or previous slaves were below them like they had always been. Different black people had different responses to this heinous behavior by the white Southerners. Some accepted the discriminatory treatment by the whites while others wanted vengeance for the belittling treatment as slaves. In the book The Marrow of Tradition, there are multiple black characters who exhibit different responses to the racism shown in different events throughout the novel. These characters, Dr. Miller, Josh Greene, and Jerry are greatly affect by slavery and racism as shown throughout the book.
First, Dr. Miller is an unique character because he is a well-off, black doctor. Though he dislikes racism towards blacks, he does not take action against it. To begin, Dr. Miller shows effects of slavery in his character because he is extremely hard working. For example, Miller opens a hospital which takes a lot of his time and energy because he must travel to get supplies and work as a doctor in his hospital. Next, racism has had a much bigger effect on Dr. Miller. When Major Carteret’s baby Dodie needs medical help, Carteret does not allow him to help with the operation. Being turned away because of color is racist, and it makes Dr. Miller feel incompetent. Lastly, another scene in the book is when Dr. Miller is on a train, talking to a white friend. The train worker makes him move to the black-labeled car, saying, “‘but the law of Virginia does not permit colored passengers to ride in the white cars’” (Chesnutt 34). Therefore, the racism affected Miller by making him seem too i...
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... Clearly, Jerry is affected by slavery and racism because he is still in the slave mindset.
Dr. Miller, Josh Green, and Jerry, three diverse black characters from The Marrow of Tradition, exhibit different effects of slavery and racism throughout the book. Dr. Miller gets his hard working qualities from his slavery influence, but racism makes him feel inferior. Josh Green, on the other hand, is socially subordinate because of slavery, and the racism makes him extremely violent towards whites. Lastly, Jerry is so influenced by white men that he still thinks he is under their control and conforms to everything they do; racism affects him by making him racist against blacks. The Civil War, though it supposedly ended slavery, monumentally impacted the blacks through racism and the long term consequences of slavery. Then was winning the Civil War this way for the better?
With Every Drop Of Blood by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier is based on the Civil War. In this novel they talked about the white-black relationships during this time period. In the novel Johnny’s father went off to fight in the war, and was shot at Cedar Creek to be sent back home for a short amount of time before he passed due to his injuries. When Johnny’s father died Johnny promised him that he would not run off to fight, that he would stay and help his mother with the farm, the house, and Johnny’s little brother Sam and his little sister Sarah. Before Johnny’s father passed Johnny asked him what the reason for the war was, and his father told him it was for ‘states rights’.
The Civil War era divided the United States of America to a point that many Americans did not foresee as plausible throughout the antebellum period. Generating clear divisions in even the closest of homes, the era successfully turned businessmen, farmers, fathers, sons, and even brothers into enemies. Many historians would concur that the Reconstruction Era ushered in a monumental turning point in the nation’s history. The common rhetoric of what the Reconstruction Era was like according to historians is that it was a euphoric era. Those same historians often write about the Reconstruction Era as a time of optimism and prosperity for African Americans. Attempting to illustrate the era in a favorable light, they often emphasize the fact that African Americans had gotten the emancipation that they were fighting for and they were free to create a future for themselves. Jim Downs, author of Sick From Freedom African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, is not like those historians at all. Downs takes a completely different approach in his book. He asserts that both the Civil War Era and
The Civil War marked a defining moment in United States history. Long simmering sectional tensions reached critical when eleven slaveholding states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Political disagreement gave way to war as the Confederates insisted they had the right to leave the Union, while the loyal states refused to allow them to go. Four years of fighting claimed almost 1.5 million casualties, resulting in a Union victory. Even though the North won the war, they did a horrible job in trying to win the peace, or in other words, the Reconstruction era. Rather than eliminating slavery in the South, the Southerners had a new form of slavery, which was run by a new set of codes called "Black Codes”. With the help of President Johnson, the South continued their plantations, in essence becoming exactly what they were before the war. Overall, the South won Reconstruction because in the end they got slavery (without the name), they got an easy pass back into the Union, and things reverted back to the way they had been prior the war.
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
The second phase of the Civil War was a victory for the south, for their political ideas of former slave owners stayed far after the war. The south was dependent on slave labor and with the slave population now free they had to forcibly change tactics to control this population. Southern whites used legal, political, and violent means to whip the black population into submission. Laws like the black codes were in the south to restrict the black population from becoming a strong community. Common practices like sharecropping crippled the black community’s only field in which they had experience in.
Norton, Beth, et al. A People and a Nation. 8th. 1. Mason, OH: 2009. 41-42, 65-67,161,173.
The institution of slavery affected both blacks as well as whites. The white and black children could not understand why they could not be friends with each other. Douglass spoke well of the white boys that he became acquainted with because they were not as knowledgeable as the adults so he was able to create a relationship with them. No one is born prejudiced. A person must be taught those ways, so Do...
Slavery was a practice in many countries in the 17th and 18th centuries, but its effects in human history was unique to the United States. Many factors played a part in the existence of slavery in colonial America; the most noticeable was the effect that it had on the personal and financial growth of the people and the nation. Capitalism, individualism and racism were the utmost noticeable factors during this most controversial period in American history. Other factors, although less discussed throughout history, also contributed to the economic rise of early American economy, such as, plantationism and urbanization. Individually, these factors led to an enormous economic growth for the early American colonies, but collectively, it left a social gap that we are still trying to bridge today.
The psychological impact on the slaves in this book was awful, mainly because of the abuse, discrimination, humiliation, sexual assault, rape, and embarrassment that they were served by their owners. The abuse, assault, humiliation, and rape were the worst, forty-six people of the chain gang were offered to eat semen from the guards for breakfast (Parker). The slaves in Beloved were treated as animals, the white people of the towns dehumanized blacks and from then on they look at blacks as animals, they had no value, no purpose (Heffernan). Schoolteacher, the slave owner looked at blacks as something way less than human, he look at them with talks of mating them with one another or whoever wanted to “mate” with them, he didn’t care, none of them cared (Heffernan).
Chapter sixteen begins with the reconstruction period of the civil war. From previous history classes I have learned more in depth about the war and why the North was fighting against the South, but overall I think the most important part to look at from the civil war is the end of it and what was to come after it, which was the reconstruction era. Lincoln had just released his emancipation proclamation and freed the slaves. As happy as this may seem it was actually quite the opposite. Attitudes of white southerners towards black in the south hadn 't changed a bit after the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1865 Carl Schurz was sent by President Andrew Johnson to investigate the current conditions of the confederacy after they were defeated in the civil war. While there he shared in his “Report on the Condition of the South” that southerners have a belief “so deeply rooted… that the negro will not work without physical compulsion”. Overall this just shows how the attitudes of white southerners were no different. They truly believed that the blacks weren 't able to work or function without force. Many northerners and abolitionists, such as Wendell Phillips, at this time saw this and actually said that Lincoln didn 't do enough. They wanted him to do a complete overhaul of southern society. Personally I understand where these people were coming from. They were people who really wanted all the issues to be resolved. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a step in the right direction, but he could have done more. Schurz even noted that “negroes who walked away from the plantations, or were found upon the roads, were shot or otherwise severely punished”. Former slaves weren ...
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
Because of the thirst of superiority whites had, they wanted to restructure the behaviors of blacks in ways that would make them behave inferior. This was aided by the Jim Crow Laws enacted during the Jim Crow period. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” in Uncle Tom’s Children explains how the natural behaviors of blacks were affected by Jim Crow laws. Wright explains how these laws affected him personally. Right from his childhood, blacks have been restricted from having anything to do with whites. Black children were brought up in ways that would make them scared of the whites. This continued even in his adulthood. Only few blacks were fortunate to work in places where whites were, but they were always treated badly. Wright got a job in an optical company, where he worked alongside two whites, Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease. When Wright asked both of his coworkers Mr. Morrie and Mr. Pease to tell him about the work, they turned against him. One day Mr. Morrie told Mr. Pease that Richard referred to him as "Pease," so they queried him. Because he was trapped between calling one white man a liar and having referred to the other without saying "Mr." Wright promised that he would leave the factory. They warned him, while he was leaving, that he should not tell the boss about it. Blacks were made to live and grow up under conditions that made them regard whites as superior. Whites also used blacks’ natural behaviors against them by sexually abusing them. It is natural for people to have sex, but if they forced or abused sexually this means that their natural behavior is being used against them because sexual abuse is not natural. Sarah, in “Long Black Song,” is an example of a black female that was sexually abused by whites. Sarah was married and had a child but when the white man came to her house he did not hesitate to have sex with her. She resisted him initially
The Civil War was meant to end slavery in the United States, but the victory could not keep prejudiced feelings and beliefs away. The newly freed African Americans who lived in the South ...
“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life,” (Lee 295.) African Americans will be doomed in certain situations due to a lack of community background, and they will always find themselves losing games, court cases, or whatever they are competing against a white man in. African Americans lacked the rights of white Americans which created unequal chances and opportunities for success. “Until my father explained it to me later, I did not understand the subtlety of Tom’s predicament: he would not have dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expect to live long, so he took his first opportunity to run--a sure sign of guilt,” (Lee 260-261.) In her coming to age, Scout real...
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird is shown in a positive light, however, it should not be because of the white savior complex throughout the book. Harper Lee fails to mention the black community more than twice. Lee continues to make it worse by having Judge Taylor appoint Atticus Finch to Tom Robinson instead of Helen reaching out to Atticus. This book makes it painfully obvious that a white man is needed to save a black man; there is irony in Tom’s character being glossed over, an overly saccharine mood when the characters praise of Atticus, and the focus is primarily on the white community rather than the on racial inequality.