Treatment of Rural African Americans in Miss Evers' Boys by Walter Bernstein

The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851, nine years prior to the Civil War at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, Ar’n’t I a woman her aim was to enrich the knowledge of antebellum black women and culture to show an unwritten side of history of the American black woman. Being an African- American and being a woman, these are the two principle struggles thrown at the black woman during and after slavery in the United States. Efforts were made by White scholars in 1985 to have a focus on the female slave experience. Deborah Gray White explains her view by categorizing the hardships and interactions between the female slave and the environment in which the

Boarding the train from Chattanooga to Memphis seems like an innocent thing to do (“UMKC” par. 2). For the Scottsboro boys, boarding that train was one of the worst things they could have done. Two dozen whites and black road the train that day, and within the first

This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.

As a matter of first importance, the account of Scottsboro Boys started in a cargo prepare that was going to West Memphis, Tennessee. It ceased at Paint Rock Alabama where the nine dark young people were captured for assaulting the two white young ladies Victoria Prince of 21 years of age, and Ruby Bates who was just 17 years of age. The young men because of the Great 1931 Global Depression were riding this cargo prepare in look for occupations in the neighboring towns and states. There were expanded rates of joblessness in the USA, individuals starved, wound up plainly anxious and exhausted. This required each individual to look for new work anyplace. On this specific prepare in the Southern Railroad Line, a battle had broken between youthful travelers who were scrabbling for space in the railroad auto. A white adolescent, Haywood Patterson had ventured on a dark youngster hand and declined to apologize. The

The narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas were nothing short of powerful as their unique resilience reflected a gruesome upbringing that would then influence audiences everywhere. Immediately the reader is introduced to the gendered distinctions in narratives as Douglas has letters and statements of prominent men reinforce the validity of his work while Jacobs is forced to create a pleading tone for acknowledgement of her experience as a female slave. Although slavery was an excruciating experience that unjustly plagued millions of African Americans, gender roles and constructs allowed for distinct offenses that forced women to experience unique abuse relative to their male counterparts. The narratives of Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglas reinforced the trials of slavery with examples of educational hardship, physical trauma and differing aspirations of freedom. These factors and a few others such as motherhood and masculinity influenced their legacy in context of slavery as a gendered experience.

In the United States in 1931, during America’s Great Depression, nine African American boys faced what is now known as one of America’s most tragic trails in history. These young boys were accused of raping two white girls while riding a train through Alabama. This accusation brought forth a mob of white people in the town of Scottsboro. The boys spent years on trial for this. The first trial was thought to have been the final convention, little did they know it was only the beginning. A second trial was held for the nine boys that shook the entire nation. After the second trial a third one was held after the judge suspected that the evidence was not properly examined. The nine young boys, known as “The Scottsboro Boys”, spent their lives in and out of a courtroom and in a cell for a crime that today is known to have never taken place.

In Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice: A saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, the author creates a way to describe the discrimination and horrible racial treatment inflicted on the African American community following the civil war and continuing into the 1900’s by following a black doctor’s life and his controversy in equality. The author sets the scene in the booming city of Detroit, a place many blacks ventured to when trying to escape the cruelty Jim Crow Laws forced upon many African Americans. The great migration of blacks fleeing to Detroit in search of a new life brought an increase of over seventy thousand people in just the short span of fifteen years. This sudden unwanted abundance of people, still disliked even in the North, lead to a city full of racial prejudices and unjust discrimination.

“Cruelty is contagious in uncivilized communities.” In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs provides a portrayal of her life as a black slave girl in the 1800s. Though Harriet described herself as having yellowish brown skin; she was the child of a black mother and a white father. “I was born a slave; but I never knew it till six years of happy childhood had passed away.” Born with one drop of black blood, regardless of the status of her white father, she inherited the classification of black and was inevitably a slave. Harriet endured years of physical and mental abuse from her master and witnessed firsthand how slaves were treated based on the color of their skin. Years of abuse can only be taken for so long, like many

During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.

Racism in Mississippi was still strong at this time. Parchman was thought of as a well-organized slave plantation that would not raise African Americans intelligence or their morality, but it could teach them proper discipline, strong work habits, and respect for white authority.(110) Although, there were some white males in the prison, they were still segregated by race. While most African American’s did work in the fields, whites with particularly useful skills hoped for jobs as carpenters, mechanics, truck drivers, maintenance men or “dog boys.” Otherwise, the whites performed the same tasks and the same routine as African Americans. (162) The women’s camp at Parchman was also segregated by race. The blacks lived in a long shed-like structure, while the whites lived in a small brick building with a high fence in-between. Very few white women ever spent time at Parchman. It was said, “It is a fortunate thing for Mississippi that white women seldom indulge in serious crime.” (174) In

In her book, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching, Crystal N. Feimster discusses how race, gender and politics shaped the post-civil war south from reconstruction into the 20th century through the use of historical statistics, narratives and recorded court cases. Through the juxtaposition of Rebecca Latimer Felton and Ida B. Wells, born a generation apart as a plantation mistress and the other into racism, Feimster explores the differences in the treatment of and the reactions to a white woman and an African American woman fighting against rape and for women’s rights. The author, discusses how institutionalized racism, patriarchy and mob violence helped and hurt these women on their quest for equal rights.

With so much going on back in 1850’s, especially the biggest issue was slavery. We tend to only think that adults were only slaves but forgot that children who were African American were also slaves too that were being put to work just like their parents. Anthony S. Parent, Jr. and Susan Brown Wallace both teamed up to collaborate studying the issue of children and slavery which is the untold story of the children during the times on slavery and their knowledge of sex. After reading the studies of their work, it was very shocking and surprising that little attention was brought up among the children during the slavery time. It was devastating to hear such treatment happening to poor innocent

Harriet Jacobs, in her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was born into slavery in the south. While her youth contained “six years of happy childhood,” a few tragedies and mistresses later, Jacobs spent many years in pain under the possession of her cruel five-year-old mistress, Emily Flint, and Emily’s father, Dr. Flint. Once able to obtain freedom, Jacobs spent most of her life working for the Anti-Slavery office in New York, in hope that one day she could make a difference in the world. “She sought to win the respect and admiration of her readers for the courage with which she forestalled abuse and for the independence with which she chose a lover rather than having one forced on her” (Jacobs 921). Linda Brett, the pseudonym that Jacobs uses to narrate her life story, endures the harsh behavior women slaves were treated with in the south during the nineteenth century. The dominant theme of the corruptive power and psychological abuse of slavery, along with symbolism of good and evil, is demonstrated throughout her narrative to create a story that exposes the terrible captivity woman slaves suffered. The reality of slavery in the past, versus slavery today is used to reveal how the world has changed and grown in the idea of racism and neglect.

The main individuals involved in the Tuskegee study, were Miss Evers, Dr. Buxon, Dr. Douglas, and a study participant, Caleb. Miss Evers struggled throughout the study knowing that the men were treated inappropriately. The author believes that Miss Evers may have had the combination of the rights and results

During the 19th century, black women faced a plethora of hardships culminating from hundreds of years of oppression and denigration while simultaneously fighting for equal rights with all other women. One of the biggest obstacles that was necessary to overcome was one of the most common ideologies of the West, the Cult of True Womanhood. This Victorian ideal of womanhood defined women within a domestic sphere and required them to be subservient to their husbands (Broude). These women gave up much more than their rights outside of the home, they were taken advantage of physically, mentally and sexually. The majority of women during this time did not meet this standard of true womanhood and never could hope to. This ideal and the common stereotypes of the time were questioned by an African-American woman named Sojourner Truth.