Now that they were freed they had no way to make money because they had no skills, and this caused many freed slaves to starve to death.There were also many laws that were put into effect that made it so that they could not live as the constitution said that they should be able to. Many slaves were also killed for no reason except for the color of their skin. Segregation would later become one of the major problems between African Americans and whites. Even a century after they had been freed African Americans were experiencing a lot of strug... ... middle of paper ... ... no more rights many African Americans longed for freedom even more than they had before. Works Cited Harlan, Louis.
Slave resistance was rarely successful because most masters would not tolerate it. Whether slaves physically or verbally opposed a white man it was dangerous. Slave’s masters consistently tried to erase African culture from their slave’s memories. They insisted that slavery had rescued blacks form the barbarians from Africa and introduced them to the “superior” white civilization. Some slaves came to believe this propaganda, but the continued influence of African culture in the slave community added slave resistance to the modification of African culture.
Through slave revolts, the whites were forced to see that slaves were never going to be satisfied with life as it was. By word of several rebellions arising in the south, they couldn’t legally free their black servants, but they could treat them better over time. The white owners did not want their families and homes to be part of an insurrection. Though many lives were lost of white men, women and children, the slaves showed power and resistance to being mistreated and disrespected. Though freedom was years away, they were taking necessary steps to prove they were indeed human.
Once the emancipation happened, there was a lot of confusion amongst slaves due to the fact that it happened unevenly across the country; at the end many of these slaves would have been freed more than once by the Union Army. Their freedom would last as long as the Union Army would stay in town, once the army left town they would found themselves re-enslaved by pockets of resistance. The slaves that were loyal to their owners were not willing to leave them, so they would oppose to be freed by the Union Army. Some slaves would lash back to their owners by having episodes of violent outburst. Others would joint the Union Army so they could pillage their former owner’s house.
Introduction Sprouted from slavery, the African American culture struggled to ground itself steadily into the American soils over the course of centuries. Imprisoned and transported to the New World, the African slaves suffered various physical afflictions, mental distress and social discrimination from their owners; their descendants confronted comparable predicaments from the society. The disparity in the treatment towards the African slaves forged their role as outliers of society, thus shaping a dual identity within the African American culture. As W. E. B. DuBois eloquently defines in The Souls of Black Folk, “[the African American] simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and
(www.AcedemicLibrary.com) Americans should realize the magnitude of slavery’s consequences on African Americans as a whole. Blacks were brainwashed and stripped of self-esteem and taught to be ashamed of dark color of their skin. Many African Americans have effortlessly tried to advocate “Black Pride”, trying to re-instill self-worth and being proud of our distinct facial and body features, and darker complexions. African Americans had zilch to begin with after the abolishment of slavery in 1865. Slaves were promised a “mule/ and 40 acres” and they didn’t live to receive it nor did generations to follow; because the American government has yet to live up to its word.
Fredrick Douglass, an African-American abolitionist showed his thoughts on slavery through the voice of a former slave. Fredrick Douglass, born, as a slave in Talbot County, Maryland in 1818 was a well-educated abolitionist and one of the very few African-American’s that had the opportunity. Douglass, unlike most slaves was educated as a young man by a Baltimore slave owner’s wife. He turned out to be a tremendous reader and writer and also had a great command of the English Language. Once Douglass had run away from the terrors of slavery in 1838 he joined various organizations in New Bedford, including black church, and regularly attended abolitionis... ... middle of paper ... ...way but with blood (on the day of his execution, 1859)’2 .
It freed many slaves in the South and slaves in the North who weren’t freed already. It put an end to the harsh treatment and work with no pay that the men and women who were slaves had to deal with on a daily basis. This was something good that came from the 13th Amendment. But once they were on their own most African Americans had a very hard time. Before this Amendment was passed they were used to living in someone elses home and being fed by their family.
During the period after the emancipation many African Americans are hoping for a better future with no one as their master but themselves, however, according to the documentary their dream is still crushed since even after liberation, as a result of the bad laws from the federal government their lives were filled with forced labor, torture and brutality, poverty and poor living conditions. All this is shown in film. First, after emancipation, federal laws revived slavery into new form. After slaves were freed during post- civil war, the whites especially those in the south faced problems in running their plantations; since there was no free labor force from slaves, and also some whites who had never owned slaves saw the African Americans as undesirable competition. I think the laws enforcements eventually became the method through which slavery of blacks take its new form.
Karenga defines the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as the “Holocaust of Enslavement,” which is a much more powerful designation of slavery. The slave trade incorporated the imprisonment, purchase, or discarding of an individual with intent to diminish the person to enslavement; this included all actions involved in the purchase of a slave with the intention of selling or exchanging the person (Karenga, 2010). Inequalities originating from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade continue to plague persons of African descent. Even today, African-Americans still feel the reverberations of slavery. These issues are not just the history of African slavery—it is the very heritage of African-Americans (Bogue, 1977).