Analysis Of Seizing Freedom By David Roediger

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Recommended: African American participation in the Civil War

History Untold History is taught and perceived in different ways throughout the country, however historians and teachers play a major role in how history is understood. My history teacher made me understand that the African-American slaves suffered adversity in different manners but never explained how their efforts led to a revolution in America. This gap has been filled by David Roediger in his book Seizing freedom where he reminds us of what we have missed in our prominent and scholarly accounts of emancipation and what we might gain by revisiting an era when “profound and unimaginable changes exploded” across the country(p.9). In reference to WEB Du Bois analysis of Civil war as workers strike, David Roediger accounts for the upsurge and …show more content…

David Roediger, helps us understand “self-emancipation as both deeply rooted and glorious in its maturation” (p.9). The book juxtaposes stories usually not told together but David Roediger finds important connections and uses it to explain how to improve our better selves.
Recent documentary or films about slavery show the extent to which slavery impacted the war but no so much about the ideas and actions of ex slaves that gave birth to a revolution. David Roediger methods of research are different from most history books, in that he gathers different information from historic writers like Douglas Bayton who seeked to place disability in the history of the civil war (p.9). By involving disability in civil war history it brings to light the people who cared for them in those times and the controversies between the injured veterans and the African-Americans in …show more content…

Most films on slavery focuses on the brutality the white men inflicted upon slaves but fails to highlight the role they also played in the freedom of the slaves. “Many whites did imagine freedom and moved towards it in the 1860s” (Roediger 68). It is also important to note that most of the intended alliances to be formed with the African-Americans were not necessarily because they had a greater purpose or common goal but because they wanted to avoid opposition from the black men (Roediger

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