I was reading the Perman and Taylor readings for today and was suddenly struck by something. Now I don't consider myself a bra-burning feminist, but I couldn't help but notice that none of people campaigning for civil rights for blacks, made any mention of rights for women. I know that the fight for women's suffrage would take another war in order to accomplish this. But when awarding women the right to vote, President Wilson used the service that women did during World War I to justify it. But what about all of the work that women did during the Civil War? Without the support of the home front neither side would have had the moral to fight, the South in particular needed this. So why did it take yet another war where a yet another generation of women endured losing husbands, sons and brothers to slaughter for them to be seen as equals?
I meant for this blog to be about how the black man failed his white sisters, mothers, wives and daughters but instead I just ranted. So sorry because I wish that I had answers for my question. When the State Colored Convention Addresses the People of Alabama with words such as:
"Color can no longer be pleaded for the purpose of curtailing privileges, and every public right, privilege and immunity is enjoyable by every individual member of the public."
I cannot help but scream, "NO THEY ARE NOT!" What about the curtailment of privileges based on gender? I will never truly understand how black men can cry for freedom for themselves and not yet not care about 1/2 the population still being second class citizens.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Reconstruction
I guess that I have lived under a cloud of optimism concerning the post-Civil War South for the past few decades. Upon reading the documents in Chapters 10 and 11, I was struck by how little was really accomplished, either in word or attitude. Though the 14th Amendment freed the slaves, it truly did nothing to guarantee them freedom or to help give them a leg-up in the society that they suddenly found themselves a part of. It was left to private organizations, many of them religious in nature, to try to bring education and aid to the ex-slaves. The federal government did NOTHING with further legislation to protect these newly freed persons and left them to the mercy of smaller governments, from the state governments down to the local city councils, to manage as they saw fit, which usually meant they were either ignored or worse still actively abused and discriminated against.
It was as though the North expected the South to just meekly give-up the idea of Black inferiority and passively turn-over the new leaf of equality. I have not decided if the members of Congress were racists, or ridiculously ignorant, apathetic or merely hopelessly naive.
It was interesting to read about the Georgia planter who is demanding that Negro woman should work in the fields same as their husbands. What about his wife and daughters? Why aren't they out working in the fields? Or in as seamstresses in a milliner's shop in town? Why is it that he signals out "Negro" woman for such admonishment for laziness? He still sees himself as the plantation owner directing his slaves on when they should work, who should and what tasks they should do. He presumes to know what is best for these people's families and his racism is easily to spot in the opening paragraph:
"Their husbands are at work, while they are nearly idle as it is possible for them to be, pretending to spin --- knit or something that really amounts to nothing for their husbands have to buy them clothing I find from my own hands wishing to buy of me --- "
He also makes an appeal to nationalism as to why the woman need to work:
"their labor is a very important percent of the entire labor of the South"
He means it will be to the benefit of the "White South".
However, towards the end of the passage, this Southern Planter does come down hard on poor Whites as well, stating that they also should be forced to work, because obviously if they are NOT working than they MUST be stealing. Could this "unspeakable word here" make any more sweeping generalization without having any fraking clue of the circumstances of the situation? What an arrogant piece of dog excrement!
No "patience with idleness and idlers"??? Then he must want the entire planter class imprisoned under the vagrant act, since every single member of that class were lazy, idle people who did NOTHING but live off the work of their slaves. You want a definition of "idlers" and "lazy" then he should have looked no further than his own damn class! What a fraking hypocrite!
What "Henry Adams Reports" is even more monstrous and is the beginning of the re-institution of slavery, albeit under a different name, in the South. Plantation owners forcing black women to work in the fields in order for the families to receive food? How monstrous! These plantation owners were still acting as slave owners. I am really surprised that there weren't more uprisings, considering how the black population outnumbered the white.
It was as though the North expected the South to just meekly give-up the idea of Black inferiority and passively turn-over the new leaf of equality. I have not decided if the members of Congress were racists, or ridiculously ignorant, apathetic or merely hopelessly naive.
It was interesting to read about the Georgia planter who is demanding that Negro woman should work in the fields same as their husbands. What about his wife and daughters? Why aren't they out working in the fields? Or in as seamstresses in a milliner's shop in town? Why is it that he signals out "Negro" woman for such admonishment for laziness? He still sees himself as the plantation owner directing his slaves on when they should work, who should and what tasks they should do. He presumes to know what is best for these people's families and his racism is easily to spot in the opening paragraph:
"Their husbands are at work, while they are nearly idle as it is possible for them to be, pretending to spin --- knit or something that really amounts to nothing for their husbands have to buy them clothing I find from my own hands wishing to buy of me --- "
He also makes an appeal to nationalism as to why the woman need to work:
"their labor is a very important percent of the entire labor of the South"
He means it will be to the benefit of the "White South".
However, towards the end of the passage, this Southern Planter does come down hard on poor Whites as well, stating that they also should be forced to work, because obviously if they are NOT working than they MUST be stealing. Could this "unspeakable word here" make any more sweeping generalization without having any fraking clue of the circumstances of the situation? What an arrogant piece of dog excrement!
No "patience with idleness and idlers"??? Then he must want the entire planter class imprisoned under the vagrant act, since every single member of that class were lazy, idle people who did NOTHING but live off the work of their slaves. You want a definition of "idlers" and "lazy" then he should have looked no further than his own damn class! What a fraking hypocrite!
What "Henry Adams Reports" is even more monstrous and is the beginning of the re-institution of slavery, albeit under a different name, in the South. Plantation owners forcing black women to work in the fields in order for the families to receive food? How monstrous! These plantation owners were still acting as slave owners. I am really surprised that there weren't more uprisings, considering how the black population outnumbered the white.
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