Imagining Reconstruction
Keen Tojones
2011/09/09 00:39:37
Imagining Reconstruction
|
|
|||||
|
0 votes
|
|
0% | |||
|
0 votes
|
|
0% | |||
"I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it." -Harriet Tubman
Good people are like bad people, they become emotionally worn out. A person with a cause, good or bad can be worn out. Hulled. Left empty and fatigued. Or maybe that's how you make bad people out of good people.
Some how, I imagine the day that President Jefferson Davis was located and captured, the Civil War legally ended, but it was April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomatox Court House that the wind was let out of the Southern Sails.
Slave women often learned not to love their children. I mean, how many could be taken away from you and sold, without running your head crazy?
This very damaging aspect of slavery, no doubt did quite a number on many black women.
And their children? Well, how would you have felt to be taken from your mother and put with strangers. All the while learning "your place". Learning that place was low and only important in terms of work performed. Your humanity blotted out.
It no doubt was a terribly frightful experience and I'm sure one which caused many tears to fall from the eyes of black children. Marring them emotionally, forever.
So, when the Civil War ended, 4 million black people were suddenly free, and you can bet that it was a bitter sweet thing. Some were too old to pursue dreams. Some were so psychologically damaged that their intelligence was damaged.
I'm sure that there were children who wondered where their mother's were. Black women who searched for their children.
The black men, no doubt, were happy to be free, but were awakening to that question, Free to what? Suddenly there was the responsibility of freedom.
White Southerners were pissed off. It was a seething anger. They ran their mouths publicly. Banged on the doors of black people in the night. Swore revenge.
(I think that had I been a slave and had been under 70 years of age, my first thought would have been to mount a horse and head north. Real fast.)
The south had taken the brunt of the war. Most of the war was fought below the Mason-Dixon line.
Towns were gutted. Plantations ransacked. The fields had not been tended to. Bridges were torn up. The rail road had been messed up.
Southern social organization had been wrecked, and awaited the federal government's arrival to reorganize.
Reconstruct.
General Ulysses S. Grant, who fought like a tiger for the North, would later, as President Grant, attempt to put an end to the Ku Klux Klan, which sprang up, covertly, to keep black people down.
I imagine the time of Reconstruction as a time of insanity. A time of brokeness for the South. I do imagine that there were many slaves who were suffering mentally and emotionally. I don't have to imagine that the white southerners were crazy.
People wandered. Observed. Looked for ways to survive. Took stock of their losses. Some, no doubt, slept beneath the stars, hunted for food.
And many were probably scared to the point of paranoia. Both black and white.
Confederate coins are worth more today than they were at the time after the war. After the war, they became worthless.
Somehow, I feel sure that it was during this time that the Southerners sharpened their bartering skills. Especially the poor whites and the freed slaves.
Northerners brought in food and volunteers to aid the war ravaged south. Initially this aid was thought necessary for only blacks. But was also given out to whites who had nothing.
Lincoln had planned to be lenient on the Confederates and had planned a Reconstruction. Unfortunately, a Southerner blew his head off before he got the chance to implement his idea. (John Wilkes-Booth, Ford Theatre, April 14, 1865)
Andrew Johnson wanted to go with Lincoln's ideas. However, there were Republican's who weren't quite so forgiving and would not soon forget that the South, instead of heeding the United States government, required war.
Up until May of 1865, America was a dichotomy. The northerners had grown in awareness. The southerners had not. To the tune of 4 million people being held against their will and used for whatever purposes the southerners deemed fit.
The Freedmen's Bureau was established by the federal government in 1865 to give legal aid, set up schools and provide health care.
(From 1865 until 1957, blacks and whites attended seperate schools. In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower, after a Supreme Court Decision, dispatched the U.S. Army to aid U.S. Marshalls in enforcing the order of desegregation.)
During Reconstruction, (1865-1877), 2 African-American men made it to Congress and 20 made it to the House of Representatives.
But for the most part, there were many African-Americans who suffered through the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy throughout the south.
Too, any white's who attempted to defend African-Americans were targeted by the Klan.
Looking at the past 150 years of Reconstruction is a testament to the spirit of the African American, and what America can accomplish.
It's also a testament concerning White America and our understanding of humanity...the slaves within us.
Black blood is not always so obvious.
Good people are like bad people, they become emotionally worn out. A person with a cause, good or bad can be worn out. Hulled. Left empty and fatigued. Or maybe that's how you make bad people out of good people.
Some how, I imagine the day that President Jefferson Davis was located and captured, the Civil War legally ended, but it was April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomatox Court House that the wind was let out of the Southern Sails.
Slave women often learned not to love their children. I mean, how many could be taken away from you and sold, without running your head crazy?
This very damaging aspect of slavery, no doubt did quite a number on many black women.
And their children? Well, how would you have felt to be taken from your mother and put with strangers. All the while learning "your place". Learning that place was low and only important in terms of work performed. Your humanity blotted out.
It no doubt was a terribly frightful experience and I'm sure one which caused many tears to fall from the eyes of black children. Marring them emotionally, forever.
So, when the Civil War ended, 4 million black people were suddenly free, and you can bet that it was a bitter sweet thing. Some were too old to pursue dreams. Some were so psychologically damaged that their intelligence was damaged.
I'm sure that there were children who wondered where their mother's were. Black women who searched for their children.
The black men, no doubt, were happy to be free, but were awakening to that question, Free to what? Suddenly there was the responsibility of freedom.
White Southerners were pissed off. It was a seething anger. They ran their mouths publicly. Banged on the doors of black people in the night. Swore revenge.
(I think that had I been a slave and had been under 70 years of age, my first thought would have been to mount a horse and head north. Real fast.)
The south had taken the brunt of the war. Most of the war was fought below the Mason-Dixon line.
Towns were gutted. Plantations ransacked. The fields had not been tended to. Bridges were torn up. The rail road had been messed up.
Southern social organization had been wrecked, and awaited the federal government's arrival to reorganize.
Reconstruct.
General Ulysses S. Grant, who fought like a tiger for the North, would later, as President Grant, attempt to put an end to the Ku Klux Klan, which sprang up, covertly, to keep black people down.
I imagine the time of Reconstruction as a time of insanity. A time of brokeness for the South. I do imagine that there were many slaves who were suffering mentally and emotionally. I don't have to imagine that the white southerners were crazy.
People wandered. Observed. Looked for ways to survive. Took stock of their losses. Some, no doubt, slept beneath the stars, hunted for food.
And many were probably scared to the point of paranoia. Both black and white.
Confederate coins are worth more today than they were at the time after the war. After the war, they became worthless.
Somehow, I feel sure that it was during this time that the Southerners sharpened their bartering skills. Especially the poor whites and the freed slaves.
Northerners brought in food and volunteers to aid the war ravaged south. Initially this aid was thought necessary for only blacks. But was also given out to whites who had nothing.
Lincoln had planned to be lenient on the Confederates and had planned a Reconstruction. Unfortunately, a Southerner blew his head off before he got the chance to implement his idea. (John Wilkes-Booth, Ford Theatre, April 14, 1865)
Andrew Johnson wanted to go with Lincoln's ideas. However, there were Republican's who weren't quite so forgiving and would not soon forget that the South, instead of heeding the United States government, required war.
Up until May of 1865, America was a dichotomy. The northerners had grown in awareness. The southerners had not. To the tune of 4 million people being held against their will and used for whatever purposes the southerners deemed fit.
The Freedmen's Bureau was established by the federal government in 1865 to give legal aid, set up schools and provide health care.
(From 1865 until 1957, blacks and whites attended seperate schools. In 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower, after a Supreme Court Decision, dispatched the U.S. Army to aid U.S. Marshalls in enforcing the order of desegregation.)
During Reconstruction, (1865-1877), 2 African-American men made it to Congress and 20 made it to the House of Representatives.
But for the most part, there were many African-Americans who suffered through the terror of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy throughout the south.
Too, any white's who attempted to defend African-Americans were targeted by the Klan.
Looking at the past 150 years of Reconstruction is a testament to the spirit of the African American, and what America can accomplish.
It's also a testament concerning White America and our understanding of humanity...the slaves within us.
Black blood is not always so obvious.
Question Closed
Opinions
Leave a comment and start the discussion!