The Role Of Slavery In Education

During reconstruction, the meaning of freedom suited many different types of interpretation; the perception of freedom between former slaves and their slaves masters were very contradictory. To begin with, African-Americans had suffered severe abuse over those years of slavery, so to them, the meaning of freedom was basically a hope that in the future, they won’t experience all kind of punishment and exploration that they have been experienced so far. Besides that, formers slaves were demanding equal civil and political rights. In the same way, they valued their freedom by establishing their own schools and churches, reuniting families that were separated under

To be free means you have freedom and certain rights without anyone interfering with you. You can also do things at your own will. However, during Reconstruction African Americans were not free because whites abused the fact that they had rights and would overpower them. One example is the Ku Klux Klan.

Throughout history freedom has had many different meanings and definitions; based on race, gender, and ethnicity. According to the dictionary freedom means the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint (“freedom” def. 1). Freedom may seem like something given to everyone however it was something workers had to fight for. Not everyone believed that workers’ rights needed to be changed, which led to a long battle between workers, employers and the government. To the working class people freedom meant making higher wages, having regulated hours, workable conditions and the right to free speech.

According to google, the definition of freedom is the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. The Freedom from imprisonment or enslavement from those who holds a person against their power or will. However, when freedom is expressed by an ex-slaved, their views are completely different. Ex-slaves found it difficult to adjust to the liberal freedom because they have to deal with relocating families, no political rights to vote, and the ability to establish land.

Freedom is being able to do anything you please, without anyone else influencing or forcing you to make the decision. Reconstruction, a dark period in the United States, tested the definition of freedom for African Americans. Reconstruction was the period following the Civil War. The South was in shambles after the long and dreadful war. Many of the buildings in the South were destroyed and the South’s industry was almost completely gone, as most of it relied on slave work.

In 1865, Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau which helped distribute food, supplies, medical care, and education to freedmen and white refugees. Its greatest success came from educational aide to about 200,000 African Americans. Failures were often derived from the re-establishment of slavery - legally - through labor contracts. These contracts were often impossible to fulfill because the landowner would claim “the sharecropper owes more than he has earned” (Document D). To pay the debt, the sharecropper must promise the landowner

When the Union defeated the Confederates in the Civil War in 1865, millions of slaves gained freedom but left areas of the South a wreck and destroyed their plantation-based economy. Shortly before the Civil War ended, Congress established The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, more commonly known as The Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a government organization that was created to help poor Southerners and to make the transition of being a slave to a free person easier. The bureau was intended to last the duration of the war and then one year after so they’ll help you for the time being and then you’re on your own. The Freedmen’s Bureau did just about everything that you could have imagined, they provided food, clothing, housing and medical aid, established schools and offered other legal assistance.

What is slavery? Slavery is forced labor and this forced labor is what built America and made them become more developed. “Africans peoples were captured and transported to the Americas to work. Most European colonial economies in the Americas from the 16th century through the 19th were dependant on enslaved African labor for their survival.” Many claim that enslavement was very necessary in order for America to thrive and not die off for it is now one of the best countries in the world. However, slavery was not necessary in the Americas it was just a mechanism that just stripped Africans of their human rights, giving the slave masters the “right” to abuse them. Slavery was not necessary in the Americas because without slavery America would

family, which meant less financial dependence on the American government. The black man, then responsible for more than himself, suffered greater pressure to obtain work. Not only was vagrancy against the law at the time, but also the inability to find work would potentially mean the family would starve. Because of this, most freed slaves fell victims to Sharecropping, where they would work a share of the land in exchange for crops. Just like the landowner, they too had to suffer any losses in failed crops. Because the land they lived and worked on was rented, many families found themselves financially bound to the landowner. These free men and families fell into debt, and essentially became

Freedom is an adjective describing how someone or something is no longer under another person’s command. However others may believe that it could be defined as having equal opportunity or abilities as others. During the Reconstruction period, “freedom” was now given to former slaves. This reconstruction period immediately followed the Civil War. The purpose behind this period was to help the South become a part of the United States again, after many of the Union soldiers had controlled large areas of the South. There were two plans however, Lincoln’s and then the Radical’s. Lincoln wanted a fast and lenient process that would hold the South under the Executive Branch as much as possible. Because he believed that the South never actually had

In spite of the work of the Bureau and sharecropping, freed people still lacked what they wanted most; economic sovereignty. Democrats, Republicans, and African-Americans during the Reconstruction Era had three different perspectives of freedom, and what efforts needed to be made to make everyone in the country unite. Everyone got what he or she wanted in the end except for African-Americans. Democrats were given the industry of sharecropping, Republicans “helped” the freed people, but African- Americans were still inferior and treated as slaves. Freedmen were able to work and become citizens, but where they truly free once slavery ended.

In some states, like South Carolina, African Americans had to pay a certain tax if they weren’t servants or farmers. They weren’t even allowed to do any fishing or hunting in certain areas. African Americans weren’t able to own guns, and if they had any dogs, THEY WERE EVEN TAXED!! There was a federal agency, known as the Freedmen 's Bureau, which helped slaves with their transition from slavery to Emancipation. It was “thwarted” since it tried to “provide welfare for the newly emancipated.” All of this resulted in many of the freed slaves, staying dependent on the plantation for work.

Education has always been valued in the African American community. During slavery freed slaves and those held captive, organized to educate themselves. After emancipation the value of education became even more important to ex-slaves, as it was their emblem of freedom and a means to full participation in American Society (Newby & Tyack, 1971). During this time many schools for African Americans were both founded and maintained by African Americans. African Americans continued to provide education throughout their own communities well into the 1930’s (Green, McIntosh, Cook-Morales, & Robinson-Zanartu, 2005). The atmosphere of these schools resembled a family. The

Hammond, in The Mudsill Theory, argued, when comparing slaves in the south to those in the north, that the southern slaves were well compensated without starvation, begging, or “want of employment.” He was trying to express the argument that were not unhappy and that there was no emancipation needed because slaves were prosperous. The sentiment of slaves as happy and free was a very common one in the 18th and 19th centuries. “The negro slaves of the south are the happiest and in some sense the freest people of the world. The children, the aged, and the infirm work not at all and yet have all the comfort and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor” (Fitzhugh paragraph 4). Finally, because black slaves were considered lower class citizens, they filled an important role in early American society. Slaves were relied upon to do menial tasks and because they were low on intellect and skill, they naturally occupied this low position in society. “Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement” (Hammond paragraph 1). With this established role, it is easy to see that abolition would be difficult. In summary, the common perception that blacks were happy and well suited for their role as

Education of African American people was not supported in Southern States, this was because white people believed that if they permit their slaves to learn to write, speak and talk in English, they would eventually become rebellious to their masters and become disobedient. This fear led them to think that fundamentally African American people were unable to absorb education.