African-Americans Post-Civil War

The American Civil War was ending and African Americans gained freedom, freedom from slavery and to live life as common folk. However, being set ‘free’ was not enough for African Americans to really experience what freedom was really like. Respect and rights of citizenship are by themselves weak in the ability to survive without also obtaining economic power. This paper will examine the progression of African Americans after the Civil War of 1865.

Blackmon provides many stories in his book about what the slaves to forced laborers went through and how they felt about the new so called “freedom” they gained. The Black Americans prior to the Emancipation Proclamation have never seen the slightest clue to what freedom could even feel like. “Some of the old slaves said they too weren’t sure what “freedom” really was”

During The Reconstruction era, African Americans faced many obstacles on their way to success. Reconstruction of the United States refers to the remodeling that took place after the civil war. The country was injured in all areas. Its society, economy and physical structure had been In January of 1863; President Abraham Lincoln lifted the chains off thousands of African Americans’ shoulders by releasing the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this relief was short-winded. The Emancipation Proclamation stated that all people who were deemed as slaves, were to be set free from slavery and guaranteed to no return to it. At first glance, this new legislative act appeared to provide endless opportunities for newly freed African Americans. Instead, life after the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation conceived more problems for African Americans than those they possessed during the bondage of slavery. After the Emancipation Proclamation was passed, African Americans faced various issues including a lack of opportunities, an unfair starting point and continuous discrimination.

In his report to the secretary of war, Major Butler poses the question that many individuals did during the time regarding fugitive slaves; “are they free”, and if so, “what do we do with them?” (Doc. A) Many adopted the slaves as proletarian workers and farmers, and as people began to recognize the importance of their labor, the war began to shift. During the Civil War, a group of African Americans met to discuss President Abraham Lincoln’s proposal for Black resettlement in a foreign land. This proposal was immediately shut down due to the burden of fighting an all-out war. Under such trying circumstances, the idea of removing Black citizens through colonization was unthinkable. Although Lincoln did not think colonizing millions of African Americans was possible, he remained convinced that the profound differences between the White and Black races made such resettlement desirable. (Doc.

When looking at the social changes in American culture at the turn of the century, we see extraordinary differences in the accepted behaviours and thoughts of American citizens. The century saw a major shift in the way that people lived, with changes in politics, society, culture, economics, and technology. At the beginning of the century, discrimination based on race and sex was significant, but by the end of the 20th century, women had the same legal rights as men and racism had come to be seen as detestable.

The Reconstruction era was put into effect by Congress in 1866 and lasted until 1877. Reconstruction was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War. The reconstruction plan granted the means for readmitting the southern states into the Union, and tried to come up with the methods by which whites and blacks could live together in a non-slave society. America's position as a country was established on principles of freedom but those beliefs were weakened by slavery. At the end of the Civil War, many blacks felt that they were entitled to start collecting the benefits that had been denied for so many years. Being able to vote, own land and have a voice in political affairs were all goals that they believed were reachable.

Concluding Statement: So in conclusion, African American slaves had hard lives and suffered a lot through slavery and the Civil War.

In various states of the South, the convict lease system operated. The convict lease system allowed prison officials to collect fees from private employers who contracted with the state for work done by prisoners (Friedman, 2007). This was a source of revenue for both penitentiaries and states allowing this practice. Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee had convict lease systems and the brunt of the work by prisoners was on the backs of African American prisoners. In the 1880s and 1890s, 80 to 90 percent of all inmates in Alabama were black (Bair, 2000). During the same two decades, 60 percent of the prison population in Tennessee was black, and it was black convicts who overwhelmingly were leased out to work in coal mines (Bair, 2000).

During the “New South,” there was also an establishment of the “Convict-Lease” System, in which southern states leased gangs of convicted criminals to private interests as a cheap labor supply. Such a system is important as it set up the basis for the current prison industrial complex, in which there is a rapid expansion of the U.S inmate population due to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies. This complex, originating from the Convict-Lease system of Reconstruction disproportionately affects black men modernly, as it affected black men during the late 19th

Many say that the American Civil War was fought to free the black slaves. The Union won and declared all slaves free. Although they were named free slaves, African Slaves have never been fully set free, according to the standards of the multi-Cultural American white people. That is the purpose of this paper: ‘Free’ Black Slaves never got the freedom the Union fought for.

The power that white men possess, particularly in the South, has become so great that black people’s liberty is not guaranteed despite Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Tara Hunter offers the mass incarceration of black men and women as an example of the different methods the South had utilized in order to enslave black people. In the 1860s, public demands to end police brutality towards African-Americans arose as police officers arrested and imprisoned black folks on the basis of getting higher salaries and promotions. According to Hunter, 60% of individuals arrested in Atlanta in the 1880s were black men, despite black men only constituting 44% of the population. 80% of black women were also apprehended, 90% of them were actually sent to jail, but yet again black women only made up half of the female population. This mass incarceration of black people benefitted the state as they were sent to work in chain gangs to perform physical labour as form of “punishment”, which in reality was an alternative to slavery. Therefore, although in legal terms slavery was abolished, to believe that this was the reality being practiced is nonsensical.

Although some economic historians (DeCanio, Higgs; 1975, 1977) have concluded that laws aimed at repressing blacks were largely ineffective because of economic competition amongst blacks, Jennifer Roback of the University of Chicago Law Review asserts that the convict lease system served as a exploitive byproduct of white southerners’ desire to proclaim economic dominance over the African American labor market. The motives of lessees were not solely economically driven - they were racially discriminatory practices with the intent of keeping African-Americans as subservient citizens. Along the way, white southerners realized that they could use large groups of criminalized African Americans to build infrastructure, such as railroads, to mine coal and iron, make turpentine, clear land, and of course, grow cotton. Similarly, state governments realized that they could economically profit while socially benefiting from having African Americans off the streets and back on plantations. Since nearly all convicts were black, few whites cared about what happened to them. And if the supply of convicts fell below the demand, legislators and sheriffs stood ready to increase the supply.

The dichotomy of freedom and slavery in rhetoric and rise of the United States of America has long been an enigma, a source of endless debate for scholars and citizens alike who wonder how a nation steeped in the ideals of republicanism could so easily subjugate and enslave an entire group of people. The Chesapeake region was home to America’s great statesmen, men who espoused ideals of freedom and liberty from tyranny. Yet at the same time, these men held hundreds of men, women, and children in conditions of lifelong bondage. How then did this dichotomy arise? The dangers posed by indentured servants that became freemen resulted in the development of a system of African-descended chattel slavery in the Chesapeake, a system whose creation and continuance was aided by a continuum of racial thinking and racial prejudice aimed at Africans in Virginia.

Despite an international treaty that had prohibited taking Africans from their place of origin, many Americans and others involved in the slave trade turned a blind eye to this continuing epidemic of abduction and abuse. This specific tribe’s ordeal represented a major historical movement that helped pave the way to civil rights for all African Americans. This case alone required two landmark trials, which addressed significant disparities present in America at that time. “There has never existed a civilized society in which one segment did not thrive upon the labor of another” (Adams pg 262). When presenting his case to the Supreme Court, Adams recognized the fact that higher classes had often prospered by the exploitation of the lower classes, who, in this particular case, were

Author Douglas Blackmon tells the riveting tale of African Americans post Emancipation Proclamation. Focusing on post emancipation issues, Blackmon tells the stories of black individuals and how they continued to face the same predicaments of their predecessors, without the name slavery attached to their labor. Using sources from African Americans and slave holders, with a combination of newspaper and court recounts, Blackmon sets up various perspectives of ‘slaves’ within this era. Blackmon also brings up issues of the rape of African American woman and the lack of education for black children. These previously untold stories set up explanations of future abuses such as the research conducted within Tuskegee institute and how it is quite similar to the previous inequities faced by their ancestors. Slavery by Another Name tells the harrowing tales of African Americans post slavery and how history truly retold itself for the post-slavery generations.