Impartiality In Charles Chestnut's The Marrows Of Tradition

In southern society, in the Southern United States of America, from the period of the late 19th century to through a considerable amount of the 20th century, the structure of society had been held up like a sturdy Roman bath house. The “three pillars” that can be attributed to the strong foundations of the society in the Southern U.S.A includes: racial segregation, a cotton economy, and Democratic Party control. And in fact, these crucial pillars had been the source of a strong Southern society. But as always, time can break down even the most solid structure.

Southern Horrors Lynch Law in All Its Phases Book Review Da B. Wells-Barnett has written the book under review. The book has been divided into six chapters that cover the various themes that author intended to fulfill. The book is mainly about the Afro-Americans and how they were treated within the American society in the late 1800s. The first chapter of the book is “the offense” band this is the chapter that explains the issues that have been able to make the Afro-American community to be treated in a bad way by the whites in the United States in the late 1800s.

In the article of “The American Blindspot”, the main point is to show the differing interpretations of the Reconstruction era that arose between Foner and Du Bois. Du Bois poses the idea that the slaves are to be seen as humans and argues the side of the slaves whereas Foner argues from the side in which views the capitalistic side of Reconstruction. In Du Bois’s argument, he makes sure to clarify that he sees the slaveholders as owners of capital rather than just the wealthy elite. In turn, Foner describes the slaveholders as the ruling class and stays away from calling slaves the working class or proletarians. Foner places Reconstruction as a bourgeois revolution whereas Du Bois views the era as having two Reconstructions.

The primarily focus of this paper is to address the studies of the African-American views, conflict, and treatments from the Southern states following The Civil War. Documents include “Black Codes of the State of Mississippi” and the “Address of the Colored Convention to the People of Alabama”. These documents provide shaped rules, laws, and statutes for black society among whites. Between the years of, 1865 and 1867, both Alabama and Mississippi took action and state their thoughts towards the end of slavery in the United States.

America was no longer a society with slaves, but especially in areas of the deep south, had become a slave society. Paternalistic value embedded in the deep south slave society culture was arguably the cherry on the cake of an unattainable compromise. Americans referred to the abolition of slavery as unconstitutional, necessary to life and permanent. This thought is expanded upon by David Wilmot as he argues, “I ask not that slavery be abolished. I demand that this Government preserve the integrity of free territory against the aggressions of slavery against its wrongful usurpations”

Sources Analysis Freedom During the Reconstruction era, the idea of freedom could have many different meanings. Everyday factors that we don't often think about today such as the color of our skin, where we were born, and whether or not we own land determined what limitations were placed on the ability to live our life to the fullest. To dig deeper into what freedom meant for different individuals during this time period, I analyzed three primary sources written by those who experienced this first hand. These included “Excerpts from The Black Codes of Mississippi” (1865), “Jourdan Anderson to his old master” (1865), and “Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan in Congressional Hearing” (1872).

The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South takes a profound look into slavery in America from the beginning. The author, Kenneth Stampp, tells the story after doing a lot of research of how the entire South operated with slavery and in the individual states. The author uses many examples from actual plantations and uses a lot of statistics to tell the story of the south. The author’s examples in his work explains what slavery was like, why it existed and what it done to the American people.

To this day, the South carries the scars politically, socially and economically of what birthed it: a peculiar

After the British and French war, Peters’s family, hundred members of the Black Guides and Pioneers evacuated from New York to Nova Scotia. However, “in Nova Scotia the dream of life, liberty, and happiness became a nightmare. Some 3,000 ex-slaves found that they were segregated in impoverished villages, given small scraps of often untillable land, desprived of rights normally extended to British subjects, and reduced to peonage by a white population whose racism was as congealed as the frozen winter soil of Nova Scotia.” (Nash 7). At this new place, African Americans were treated really badly.

Imagine living in a society where the tone of one’s skin subjected them to unfair treatment and rules. This was the reality to African-Americans in the South from the end of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. Richard Wright describes the experiences of living with Jim Crow laws in his essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” African-Americans were oppressed, especially the women, and forced to follow absurd rules. Many times, the police only encouraged these unlawful rules and targeted Blacks.

From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped.

He explains that a lack of perspective and superficial analysis meant that the constructive accomplishments of the Civil War era had been ignored . Essentially, “the two-dimensional characters that Dunning’s followers highlighted” reflects exaggeration and a failure to acknowledge the abolitionists’ efforts as “the last great crusade of the nineteenth century romantic reformers.” In additional Some of Stamps works have also focused on the idea of a ‘guilt theory’ where he details that the political impacts of succession during the Civil War era resulted in southern defeat due to an “internal collapse of morale among southerners.” However the plausibility of this argument remains questionable due to stamps lack of empirical evidence.

The author, Douglas R. Egerton, has his M.A. and Ph.D. from Georgetown University. His grandparents were slaveholders and believed that slaves were property. He became interested in race relations because of grandparents and the television series “Roots”. He specifically concentrates on race relations in the American South. He is now a history professor at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.

Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition, is one of the first novels to discuss racial tension in the Post-Civil War South. Even after the abolition of slavery, white citizens like Major Carteret, General Belmont, and Captain McBane will stop at nothing to maintain the superiority of the white race. Through the novel, Chesnutt closely juxtaposes certain characters, especially of the white and black race to express that the two peoples may not be as different as one would think. For the white’s perspective, they are horrified with threat that the black race is rising in social and economic power. Characters like Janet and Olivia, McBane and Josh Green, and Polly Ochiltree and Julia are all paired together by Chesnutt to express that when one

When the white conductor rudely confronts Helene, she “turns to jelly” (22) and has “an eagerness to please and apolog[ize] for living” (21). Helene’s responses display her belief that submitting to racism will end it; on the contrary, her submissiveness to the conductor’s bigotry act proves only to degrade and dehumanize her, illustrating the manner in which racism degrades African Americans. Rather,