Wealthy Of Other Suns Analysis

During reconstruction, blacks were no longer forced to work as slaves however they still needed to work to support themselves and their families. Not many blacks had skills outside of farming so most worked the lands of the wealthy white landowners but not as slaves. They had the right to do whatever they wanted and the landowners could do nothing about it. Wealthy landowners still needed work hands and blacks needed an income so former slaveholders established the sharecropping system. Land owned by a white person would be farmed by black families and they shared the crop yield. This often resulted in the white person taking more than their share and the black families struggled to support themselves. Sharecropping did little to help economic advancement for blacks and was a way the white man could prevent blacks from making enough money

     After the devastation left from the Civil War, many field owners looked for new ways to replace their former slaves with field hands for farming and production use. From this need for new field hands came sharecroppers, a “response to the destitution and disorganized” agricultural results of the Civil War (Wilson 29). Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a portion of the crops that they bring in for their landowners. These farmhands provided their labor, while the landowners provided living accommodations for the worker and his family, along with tools, seeds, fertilizers, and a portion of the crops that they had harvested that season. A sharecropper had “no entitlement

The sharecroppers paid "rent" with a share of the crops that they raised, with roughly one-half of all they produced belonged to the white owner (Ransom and Sutch, 1977). The landowner also advanced money to the farmer to purchase seed and other necessary farming equipment. The problem was the sharecroppers rarely, if ever, made enough money from the sale of their crops to pay back their debt. This often led to what some called "debt peonage," and it effectively bound sharecroppers to the land, and the landowner (Bowles, 2011). This was a veiled form of slavery, much like convict leasing was.

After the slaves were freed in 1863, the South had to make changes to supply labor for the farming. Many shady practices by the white man occurred because of this. Sharecropping and crop liens were developed to keep the black man somewhat under their control. Since freed slaves had no money and no place to live, land holders would allow a tenant to live on their property and worked the land in exchange for a share of the crop produced, also known as sharecropping. The crop lien system was a developed to allow farmers to receive goods such as food, supplies, and seeds to be paid for after the crop was produced. This kept the black man and poor white farmers in a constant form of debt.

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. New York, NY: Random House, 2010.

These factors drove blacks out of the south to seek for a better life in the northern and eastern states of America. The most important push factor that caused blacks to leave the south was the lynching that occurred in the southern states. During this time of condemning blacks of wrongful activities, more than 2,500 blacks were persecuted and lynched in the southern states. These lynching created a number of riots that regularly protested against the lynching of blacks in the south. Blacks were scared to speak out against race in the south, so they left to pursue a better life in other parts of the country.

So that made it possible for Freedman to have a job and make money to provide for their family. According to Document D a slave's life was changing because of sharecropping. Sharecropping gave the African American a job which in return they got more money so they could provide more for their families. And before they were forced to work on the farm with no pay at all and now they could do what they knew best and could make

Isabel Wilkerson’s work, The Warmth of Other Suns, explores the search of Great Migration migrants for during the Great Migration of the 1900s. The 2007 documentary, Made in LA documents the demand for higher wages and better working conditions by Forever 21 sweatshop workers. In doing so, both works focus on individual people to tell their story about a larger issue.

The development of sharecropping was associated with the endless debt cycles that afflicted the entire South well into the twentieth century. The freedmen endured an economic status likened to peonage, (Bowles, 2011) in addition to having their hopes for political and social equality dashed. The entire South suffered, it was the freedmen who paid the highest price. Ignorant and impoverished, they were easy targets for exploitation by landlords (Bowles, 2011) and merchants alike; moreover, their options were limited by the overt racism in the South, legal restrictions and partiality. Sharecropping resulted from the intense explicit or implicit desire of white Southerners to keep blacks subservient to them. African Americans possessed few skills, and those they did possess related almost exclusively to agricultural production; they owned no property but the clothes on their backs; (Bowles, 2011) Many dreamed of "forty acres and a mule" with which to begin life anew as an integrated part of American society and the proprietor of one's own land. Inside of a year, however, a different reality became obvious to most. By 1868, land confiscation and redistribution was not in the realm of American political possibility. Desperation, familiarity with people and surroundings at the old places coupled with reunion of many lost loved ones, as well as the urgings of

Sharecropping was the institution in which freed slaves could purchase a plot of land to work themselves and in return they would have to give part of their crop to the landowners. With the Jim Crow Laws, the African Americans were being forced into working for their previous masters again even though they were considered free.

By presenting how the rich landowners and businessmen take advantage of the migrant workers and pit them against each other, Steinbeck reveals the harsher facets of capitalist society and the obstacles that the migrants face within it. The migrants had lost almost everything with the bank reclaiming their lands, and, yet, they face more hardships at the hands of wealthy capitalists. Before they even start their journey, greedy salesmen take advantage of them by selling them

Blacks have struggled to gain acceptance since they first were encountered with the injustice and inequality that dwelled in our country. However, whites had so repeatedly cut them down that most blacks were so far beaten into submission that hope for a better life seemed gone. The South could not stand

The dominance of males is very unusual to see in western culture, in fact it is highly unlikely to see such behavior, with physical and mental abuse, in the household of any family. Unfortunately, male dominance is much more likely in developing countries, mainly in Asia. The invasion of the Taliban causes this to happen in Afghanistan, creating a patriarchal society, which establishes rules unfair to the women. The Taliban also influences many men to follow their rules and believe what they say is correct, allowing them to treat women unfairly and create laws in favour of them. The influence of males under a patriarchal society in A Thousand Splendid Suns affects the other citizens in the society because they abuse females, opportunities are not given to women, and males abuse the rules in the Koran to make everything in favor of them.

Jim Crow laws established “separate but equal” facilities in the American south. African-Americans’ and other minorities were segregated from white Americans and did not have the same benefits as them. White Americans were deemed as better, smarter, and superior than African-Americans. White Americans wanted to still keep the power they had in society during slavery. Lynching became very popular in the South after Reconstruction. Stovel writes, “over 1200 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites in this region between 1882 and 1930” (844). African-Americans were lynched because they did something or were either accused of doing something that the white people did not approve of. A huge crowd would watch as a black person hung from a tree fighting for their life. The body would hang from the tree for days to put fear in other black people. This is very resembling to when slaves were beat in front of other slaves as form of teaching the other slaves a lesson. This in turn made American-American’s feel inferior and caused self-esteem

A Thousand Splendid Suns is such a good book of family and love from violence to hugs. This book was set in Afghanistan from the early 1960s to the early 2000s. One of the main characters, Mariam, lives in Herat, a small town in Afghanistan.Some other main characters are Laila, Rasheed and Tariq. Laila and Mariam both live under the control of Rasheed. This book really shows love, war, violence and feminism throughout the novel. In A Thousand Splendid Suns you see the theme love through Mariam, Laila, Aziza and Tariq.