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Project 2 Final Draft

Page history last edited by Daree Shannon 12 years, 5 months ago

Daree Shannon

 

 

In the book Forever Free Eric Foner uses his ethos about research on African American lifestyle to express the emancipation and reconstruction of slaves during the 18th and 19th centuries. Eric Foner was also a professor of history at Columbia he won both the Bancroft Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize. Eric Foner greatly expresses and explains the traumatic treatment slaves suffered by those who did not want them to receive equal rights. He makes a powerful case of history being as much about the present as it is about the past. He tells the story forward from slavery to our present era with ideas about how race and rights have shaped our experiences as citizens. Joshua Brown who was executive director of the American Social History uses illustrations that show African American culture and how they lived before and after they were freed. They are called Visual Essays because “they express the visual culture of American society during the 18th and 19th centuries.” (xiii) Eric Foner expresses African American’s dramatic struggle for freedom and equal rights. His style is telling a story of how African American‘s persevered. They were once enslaved because of the color of their skin and after years of struggling they became forever free.

African American’s became enslaved during the 18th century in a slave labor which was a legal institution in North American for a century. Slaves were bought to the United States on ships and spread to the areas where there was good quality soil for large plantations of tobacco, cotton, sugar and coffee. They were owned by white people and did the manual labor of harvesting and raising these crops. There were also slaves who worked in the house as maids, cooks, and baby sitters. Slavery was a consistent issue in the United States in the 1770s through the 1860s.

In 1860 during the 19th century only 5 percent of the African American populations were free. There would be a long time before they reached total emancipation. Africans would get together and have discussion gatherings called Colloquy. Even though it was considered a sin to educate slaves several of the Colloquy were literate. Ulysses L. Houston was taught to read and write by white sailors. He worked as a house servant and butcher during slavery and became pastor of a Baptist Church in 1861. James D. Lynch was the first African American Secretary of Mississippi. He was educated at Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire he also taught school in Jamaica and New York. These men were full of pride, promise and prepared for the challenges of freedom.

 

“The first concrete steps took toward emancipation in the North were freedom petitions arguments for emancipation presented in New England’s courts by slaves who claimed the rhetoric of liberty for themselves” (9) Those who were literate wrote letters to the government complaining about slavery and wanting to be free. The northern states established state laws in which children born into slavery would be freed after working for their owners until they were adults. Even though there were many who became free they were still improvised. Some freed slaves owned slaves but many worked as poor urban and rural laborers. Many of them were modest “All we ask is justice and to be treated by human beings” said a black convention in Mississippi. (100) Southern aggressions believed the cause of the war and the war’s outcome was a golden opportunity for the union to remake itself in accordance with the principal of equal rights for all, regardless of race. The need for emancipation ended when the 13th amendment was established and slavery was finally abolished.

Now that African American’s had reached emancipation it was now time to reconstruct. They were now freed but wanted the right to vote, and do so they had to reconstruct the amendments in the constitution. Even though they were now free racism and inequality was still an issue. Reconstructing the constitution would not be easy. There were many people who didn’t see anything wrong with racism and equality these were the same people who were in favor of slavery. But there were many people who wanted to protect former slaves. Besides Ulysses L. Houston and James D. Lynch there were other leaders who were supporters of African American’s receiving equal rights. “Thaddeus Stevens remains one of the most controversial figures in American History”. (46) “In the traditional view of Reconstruction he was portrayed as the evil genius, motivated by hatred of the South”. (47) He was born in Vermont the moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to practice law. “He served several terms in the state legislature where he became a leading defender of free public education.” (47) In 1838 there was a new state constitution drafted by a member of the convention that Stevens refused to sign because it canceled African American’s right to vote. Thaddeus Stevens didn’t care about his image he was never married but lived with a black housekeeper for years until he died in 1868.

 

When the Civil War ended only five of the northern states allowed African American’s to vote. “Rewriting the constitution suggested that the rights of individuals were connected to federal power.” (122) The time for taking on the government and reconstructing the amendments of the constitution had come. “The passage of the 14th amendment was introduced allowing states to disenfranchise women without political penalty and the 15th outlawing discrimination in voting based on race”. (125) “The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from a document concerned primarily with federal state relations and the rights of property, into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minorities could stake a claim to substantive freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government” (122)

 

There are tons of Visual Essays throughout Forever Free. On page 19 there is a visual picture that shows one of the plantations in South Carolina. Slaves are sitting on wooden benches while a man is standing on a pulpit preaching. It’s called Family Worship and was published in a British illustrated weekly during the Civil War. On page 59 there are pictures of an abolitionists Laura M. Towne and three of her African American students on St. Helena Island whom she is teaching to read and write. One of the most wonderful visual essay is on page 121 on March 1867 President Johnson and his southern allies angrily watch African American men vote. On page 15 a late 18th century painting depicts a wedding ceremony in the slave quarters where Africans developed a custom where the bride and groom jump over a stick. African American’s had great rituals that are still relevant today. These visual essays are significant because unlike the text they visually show how African American’s persevered.

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