The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

1268 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The autobiography of miss jane pittman words

Ernest J. Gaines book, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, used many historical events to connect to the characters story. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was published by Bantam Books in 1972 and has 259 pages. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a classic fictional book. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the story if a women’s life told when she was over one hundred years old. The novel goes over 3 main periods of time: war years, reconstruction, and slavery. In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman it is the time of reconstruction and the novel really connects with the history of the time.
The novel starts the story at when Jane was a young slave. The Emancipation Proclamation was a decree announced my President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 and formally issued on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in all Confederate state still in rebellion (Abbott et al. 408). Jane and the other slaves where read the proclamation and where offered to stay on the plantation by their former slave master. The slaves then gather and decided if they should stay on the plantation of leave. In the time period many white where scared of that the now freed slave would do. The former slaves did not initially even dream of social equality; far less did they plot murder and mayhem, as the white people feared (Abbott et al. 439). Although the slave are set free the social frame work slavery continues.

When Jane and a few others decided to leave the plantation patrollers spotted them and killed many of them. Jane says, “Them and the soldiers from the Secesh Army were the ones who made up the Ku Klux Klans later on” (Gaines 21). Organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black people in the South during the Reconstructi...

... middle of paper ...

... during this time. Problem involving the racial order in society caused many deaths not only in the book but in real life. Jane was free but lived as a slave her entire life. Jane tried to escape to the south but failed and work the same jobs as she did when she was a slave. Black people were not slaves but law anymore but they still lived in mental slavery, bound by the racial order. Black people suffered for many years after slavery and fought for civil rights just as Jane, Ned, and Jimmy “The One” did.

Works Cited

Abbott, Carol, Virginia Anderson, et al. The American Journey A History of the United States. 6. River: Pearson Education, 2011. Print.
Gaines, Ernest. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.
Mackintosh, Barry. "A Time of Reckoning." www.nps.gov. N.p., 30 Jan 2014. .

Show More
Related

  • Analysis Of Celia, A Slave By Melton A. Mclaurin

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    The novel showed a pivotal point prior to the Civil War and how these issues ultimately led to the fueling of quarrel between Americans. While such institutions of slavery no longer exist in the United States, the message resonates with the struggles many groups ostracized today who continue to face prejudice from those in higher

    Read More

  • Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Moore’s Ford lynching shows that the Ku Klux Klan was still very powerful in Georgia just after the Second World War. Blacks who lived in these areas which were overwhelmingly rural and contained large plantations owned by white men were regularly browbeaten into submission by the white minority and sporadic outbreaks of violence were not uncommon. There was a wealth of evidence against several white men who were prominent citizens of the county, but no prosecution was ever conducted and the murderers went to their graves without having paid for their crime....

    Read More

  • The Journey Of Christopher Columbus And Daniel Boone

    1225 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many Americans know the journey of Christopher Columbus and Daniel Boone, but a smaller percentage of the population knows about other journeys their fellow Americans have taken. Our job at PBS is to “create content that educates, informs, and inspires (PBS mission statement).” By including different or lesser known journeys for our new series, we can inform and ignite a curiosity for American history that is not often talked about. Two journeys that should be included in this project is the plight of the Native Americans during the 19th century. These forced migrations are not frequently talked about for various different reasons, such as the history behind them or their controversy, but it is our job to present these without biases to inform our viewers.

    Read More

  • The Battle of Fox Hill and Toktong Pass

    873 Words  | 2 Pages

    Edward, Rebecca and Henretta, James and Self, Robert. America A Concise History. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2012.

    Read More

  • African American´s Limitations from 1865-1900s

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...

    Read More

  • Britain Vs the Colonies: The American Revolution

    788 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tindall, George, and David Shi. America: A Narrative History. Ed. 9, Vol. 1. New York: WW. Norton & Company, 2013. 185,193. Print.

    Read More

  • Ida B. Wells, Booker T, Washington, and W.E.B Dubois

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Octavia E. Butler's Kindred

    1346 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the novel, it can then be concluded that issues that may seem to have disappeared from the world still thrive no matter the period of time. There is still some sort of oppression that takes place even if not necessarily by one race over another. Slavery, racism and gender abuses are still very much a part of the modern world. No matter how they seem to be removed from the world, there is still a little part of them that thrives within the very fabric of society.

    Read More

  • The History of Labor Unions

    1247 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tindall, George Brown., and David E. Shi. America a Narrative History. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2007. Print.

    Read More

  • The Cultural Movement In Willis Richardson's The New Negro Movement

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    Jane was oppressed by the cultural norms and was forced to live in a society where the white society has power over the African-Americans. Emma is the result of long term overpowerment by the white society. John says, “She so despises her own skin that she can’t believe any one else could love it” (Fire, 14). Due to the cultural norms and stereotypes of the “Old Negro” she became a race radical. This is the old psychology which differed from the new psychology of the younger generations. In both plays, the opposing forces were Alec versus Jane and Emma versus John. These forces were the ideas that were attributed by the ideals that existed in society. It was believed that African-Americans talked, dressed, behaved, and thought in ways that lacked in sophistication and refinement. These were some of the attributes that society generally gave to the whites (Jarrett 837). Throughout, both plays the stereotypical language is present in both Jane and

    Read More

  • The Ku Klux Klan

    2117 Words  | 5 Pages

    The critical time periods in the Ku Klux Klan’s history can be simply broken down into separate “Klans.” Former Confederate soldiers in Pulaski, Tennessee formed the first Klan around a year after the end of the Civil War. Soon after, Nathan Forrest, a former Confederate lieutenant general, was named the “Grand Wizard” of the organization. The “main objective of white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting” and restore the white supremacy the South saw prior to the Civil War ("Effects of the Klu Klux Klan"). At this point, Klansmen would ride at night through towns brutally intimidating, blacks and radical Republicans. These tactics got so bad that in 1870, Congress began passing the first of three...

    Read More

  • The Revolution of 1800

    1680 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tindall, George B., and David E. Shi. America: A Narrative History. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007.

    Read More

  • Harriet Jacobs Incidents And A Slave Girl: An Analysis

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later

    Read More

  • Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl And Frederick Douglass

    1202 Words  | 3 Pages

    The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick

    Read More

  • Slave Women In Caribbean Society Summary

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    Author Clare Johnson starts the review of the literature by explaining to the reader that when she was in middle and high school, the only areas of black history that she was taught was about captives running away from the harsh and inhumane treatment of their oppressors while working in the fields. She also explains to the reader that her none of her educators or any of the other literatures that she read in junior or high school ever discussed or even briefly introduced various approaches of resistance to enslavement that were done by both genders of slaves who were being held captive. It was not uncommon for black women slaves to commit murder against their white captors. Women have also been found to figure prominently in such events as

    Read More

More about The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Open Document