After the Fact: Bottom Rail on Top

The Negro Digs Up His Past by Arthur Schomburg is an article he wrote in 1925, in which he complaint that somehow through the years African American history has been questioned and denied as many claim that Africans have no history at all. He uses this paper to illustrate the importance of recording the collective accomplishments of African Americans and that we must at all costs save any evidence, so that things like this do not happen again in the future. He wants to make sure to leave no place for doubts that African Americans have a history and is irrefutable in the eyes of skeptics and the world. According to Schomburg, “Though it is orthodox to think of America as the one country where it is unnecessary to have a past, what is luxury for the nation as a whole becomes a prime social necessity for the Negro(Schomburg 231).” He emphasizes that blacks have to dig deep into their own history in order to hold their own against the current oppression. He wants to set the record straight and restore the history that was omitted, the history that was denied to them, a history that has somehow been stolen from them forever.

African American Studies is a very complex subject. To confuse African American studies with black history is a common occurrence. African American studies is much deeper and more profound than just Black history alone. There are many unanswered and unasked questions among the Black American culture which causes confusion and misunderstanding in modern day society. In unit one there were many themes, concepts, and significant issues in the discipline of Africana studies. Both W.E.B Du Bois and Vivian V. Gordan touched on many concerns.

The article jumps straight into the moments when the slaves get their freedom. “The thunder of freedom roared” as slaves were shocked that they were finally free. In fact, some were so shocked they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Most of the slaves “had no hesitation about choosing freedom , others staying with their masters because of intense loyalty and because some feared the Union Army. Even though they were the ones who freed the slaves some of the Union soldiers looked at slaves with hatred. The real reason for the war was to reunite the

Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass both wrote narratives that detailed their lives as slaves in the antebellum era. Both of these former slaves managed to escape to the North and wanted to expose slavery for the evil thing it was. The accounts tell equally of depravity and ugliness though they are different views of the same rotten institution. Like most who managed to escape the shackles of slavery, these two authors share a common bond of tenacity and authenticity. Their voices are different—one is timid, quiet, and almost apologetic while the other one is loud, strong, and confident—but they are both authentic. They both also through out the course of their narratives explain their desires to be free from the horrible practice of slavery.

Ira Berlin (author of many thousands gone) starts this book off (in the prologue) by recalling a dispute some years ago over “who freed the slaves?” in the Civil War South. He was interviewed on Washington's public radio station about the meaning of “The Emancipation Proclamation”. He also addressed other familiar themes of the great document origin’s nature of the Civil War changing, the growing Black labor and the union's army’s dependence on it, the Evermore intensifying opposition to slavery in the North, and the interaction of military necessity an abolitionist idealism. He rehearsed the long established debate over the role of Abraham Lincoln, the radicals in Congress, abolitionists in the North, the Union army in the field, and slaves on the slaves on the plantations of the South in the destruction of slavery and in the authorship of legal freedom. During this debate he restated his position that “slaves played a critical role in securing their own freedom”.

Slavery by Another Name gives readers an interesting and eye opening look into the past of the re-enslavement of Black Americans. The author, Douglas Blackmon, presents a compelling and effective presentation and argument; which adds on to my previous knowledge of this familiar and personal topic, that slavery did not necessarily end with the Emancipation Proclamation. He argues that from the Civil War to World War II Black Americans were re-enslaved through hard labor. He uses various examples of real life experiences from descendants of the re-enslaved Black Americans and documents to support his presentation which gives the reader a better view as to what those times were like. Blackmon researched all the facts and information for this book himself being certain not to alter any quotations from individuals to keep everything true. Although Blackmon uses many stories in his book he chose to focus this narrative on one forgotten black man and his family, Green Cottenham. Blackmon states in his introduction, “The absence of his voice rest at the center of this book” (pg 10).

In the village of Hampton there was a man who goes by the name of Benjamin F. Butler who had in his words, “a large number of Negros, many of them are composed in a great measure of women and children who had fled thither within my lines for protection, who had escaped from marauding Rebels who had been gathering up able-bodied blacks to aid them in construction their batteries on the James and York rivers... (Doc A)” This may prove to us that Ben was a slave owner in Virginia possibly before the Civil War and during the Civil War. Ben had some questions on his mind about his slaves, “First, what shall be done with them? Second, what is their state and condition? Upon these questions I desire the instruction of the department. (Doc A)” He had many other questions about his slaves and how the way he was treating them, “... Are these men, women, and children slaves? Are they free? Is their condition that of men, women, and children, or of property, or is it a mixed relation? What has been the effect of rebellion and a state of war on their status? (Doc A)” Ben had his moments on his questions about the slaves and the events that are going on, but he had something to say to his questions in his head, “When I adopted the theory of treating the able-bodied Negro fit to work in the trenches as property liable to be used in aid of rebellion, and so contraband of war, that condition of things was

The Civil War caused a shift in the ways that many Americans thought about slavery and race. Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over helps readers understand how soldiers viewed slavery during the Civil War. The book is a narrative, which follows the life of Union soldier who is from Massachusetts. Chandra Manning used letters, diaries and regimental newspapers to gain an understanding of soldiers’ views of slavery. The main character, Charles Brewster has never encountered slaves. However, he believes that Negroes are inferior. He does not meet slaves until he enters the war in the southern states of Maryland and Virginia. Charles Brewster views the slaves first as contraband. He believes the slaves are a burden and should be sent back to their owners because of the fugitive slave laws. Union soldiers focus shifted before the end of the war. They believed slavery was cruel and inhumane, expressing strong desire to liberate the slaves. As the war progresses, soldiers view slaves and slavery in a different light. This paper, by referring to the themes and characters presented in Chandra Manning’s What this Cruel War Was Over, analyzes how the issue of slavery and race shifted in the eyes of white Union soldiers’ during Civil War times.

During the Revolution, the British viewed the African American’s in the South as numbers to add to their side of the war and also as a group of individuals to manipulate in warfare (Nash et al., 2008). On the other hand, the American’s viewed the slaves as vulnerable and dangerous. With so much speak of liberty and freedom during the revolution, the African American’s began to petition against the lives they were living as slaves and fought to have their own liberties.

After reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, it is clear to see the true horrors behind the entirety of slavery. It is one thing to learn about it from a textbook or to sit through a lecture, but it is a completely different experience to get an account of how grossly inhumane, frightening, and appalling slavery really was from someone who experienced the terrors first-hand. Reading this narrative provided extremely descriptive details of how slaves truly were treated. Douglass recounted the time where he had often:

The second source is a primary source article titled “Special Issue on Federal Records and African American History”. This article was written by Phyllis Palmer to be published in a special issue of Prologue Magazine in the summer of 1997. The

slaves themselves took actions that helped propel a reluctant white America down the road to emancipation. Well before Lincoln made emancipation a war aim, blacks, in the North and the South, were calling the conflict the “freedom war.” In 1861 and 1862, as the federal army occupied Confederate territory, slaves by the thousands headed for Union lines. Unlike fugitives before the war, these runaways included large numbers of women and children, as entire families abandoned the plantations. Not a few passed along military intelligence and detailed knowledge of the South’s terrain. In southern Louisiana, the arrival of the Union army in 1862 led slaves to sack plantation houses and refuse to work unless wages were

During the 1840s, America saw increasingly attractive settlements forming between the North and the South. The government tried to keep the industrial north and the agricultural south happy, but eventually the issue of slavery became too big to handle, no matter how many treaties or compromises were formed. Slavery was a huge issue that unraveled throughout many years of American history and was one of the biggest contributors leading up to the Civil War (notes, Fall 2015). Many books have been written over the years about slavery and the brutality of the life that many people endured. In “A Slave No More”, David Blight tells the story about two men, John M. Washington (1838-1918) and Wallace Turnage (1846-1916), struggling during American slavery. Their escape to freedom happened during America’s bloodiest war among many political conflicts, which had been splitting the country apart for many decades. As Blight (2007) describes, “Throughout the Civil War, in thousands of different circumstances, under changing policies and redefinitions of their status, and in the face of social chaos…four million slaves helped to decide what time it would be in American History” (p. 5). Whether it was freedom from a master or overseer, freedom from living as both property and the object of another person’s will, or even freedom to make their own decisions and control their own life, slaves wanted a sense of independence. According to Blight (2007), “The war and the presence of Union armies

It is worth studying this interview because as we have two transcriptions of the same interview wa can compare them and see their similarities and differences. The transcriptions are complementary. Furthermore, “Aunt” Rhody Holsell depicts former slaves' life after being

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.