The Forgotten Experience Summary

An uncharacteristic take on rural black politics, Steven Hahn’s A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration transports readers into a world of faith, power, and family across the rural South. Diving into a period that spans nearly one hundred years, Hahn, an author, specialist, and professor, addresses the political culture of newly freed slaves as they maneuvered through challenges of freedom, Jim Crow laws, and religion. Hahn pens, “ [A Nation under Our Feet] is a book about extraordinary people who did extraordinary things under the most difficult…” (1). The author successfully presents such book in this sequential timeline and geographical mapping from Texas to Virginia. Through his synthesis of vast primary literature on slavery, Civil War South, and the Great Migration, Hahn supports his arguments and presents readers with a new look into the past.

The overwhelming majority of white northerners cared little about the welfare of the slaves and treated the blacks who lived among them with contempt, ridicule, discrimination, and sometimes violence”

The author reveals that all of these diverse components fit into one extensive civil rights struggle of the North, even if they do not establish one vast continuous movement from the 1920s to the 1970s. Through a number of narratives that remain untold, partly stated, distorted, and misunderstood due to context, Sugrue illustrates that both the North and the South agonized through the same difficulties and the same battles. Equality in the North was not guilelessly and compassionately provided by white Northerners. The struggles that black Americans in the North endured and the shape of their protests were consistently molded by community circumstances and community

The master had slaves in the field and slaves in the house. Being a house slave was more crucial than being a field slave. Fredrick Douglass got to experience working in both enviroments. Douglass grew up to working as a house slave and as he got older moved to working as a field slave. At a certain time in the morning, a horn would go off in colonel Lloyd’s farm and all the slaves had to be up and ready to work, if not Mr. Severe, the overseer had a stick to whip them.(Douglass, 346-347) Even though being a field slave was hard but it was harder for Fredrick to work outside with no shoes nor pants nor socks, pratically naked.

Before the 1860’s the native americans were living in peace until the Colonists attacked. The Western Expansion of 1860-90 greatly affected the lives of Native Americans, due to the powerful role

“Based on the documentary Black Indians, why did Native Americans and African Americans form alliances and intermingle historically?” The interracial cooperation between Native Americans and African Americans came from necessity. In addition, the rationale for this relationship has changed periodically throughout the history of their contact in Colonial America. During the period of slavery in the United States, the children of African American man and Native American women would gain the freedom of Native Americans in the United States at that period.

The American Revolution brought the long lingering assumption that the colonists reasoning behind wanting to disassociate themselves from England was for the same reasons that African slaves within the states wanted to gain their own personal freedom as well. This Revolutionary war last from 1765 through 1783 and within those eighteen years of battles, although blacks could fight alongside the US or British soldiers. However, before the war had even begun, a small revolution amongst certain black communities long before the battle begun. A historical African American figure named Mum Bett from Massachusetts took matters into her own hands early on. As a house slave, she used her accessibility to information she would hear within her master’s

African americans were discriminated against strictly because of their race and had limited rights compared to other people. They were very restricted because of their race. Some examples would be segregation, limited utilities and education, and they had to give up their seats on buses for white people.

All that the Cherokees wanted was the liberty to remain in the land that they had been inhabiting for generations. Instead, they were tossed around like dolls by the U.S. The Native Americans stood up for themselves and the rules that the U.S. was founded on, yet they got punished. This letter from the Cherokee nation shares the same

Before the early 1840s, no one could truly comprehend the horrors and effects of enslavement. To the average southerner, it was a way of life. While in the north, it was more ambiguous in their view. The north’s view began to change when Frederick Douglass began to speak and write about enslavement and his personal experiences. He was one of the first enslaved people who displayed nuanced speech and intellectual thought.

The diary writing by William Byrd show us how slaves had a major part in the economy of the colonial America and how most of them were treated. Most elites European come to the Americas looking for wealth and power, but they did not have the workforce to accomplish their goals they need people to work their cultivation. Slave Africans became a shipper and easier solution to this problems. (63) “From 1492 to 1820 enslaved African migrants outnumbered Europeans migrants to the new world by nearly five to one”. This incoming slaves Africans did most of the hurt work for this elite Europeans.

African Americans had a huge impact on the revolutionary war. However, from the time of America's founding to the late 1800s, African Americans were subject to large amounts of racism. The white people who lead the country viewed African Americans as less than people. They even went so far as to enslave them and force them to work on farms and plantations. Even with all the problems they faced, some persisted and made a change in society.

The blacks did not receive the same luxuries as the whites did. For instance, the colored received less than stellar entertainment where as the whites were able to get anything they wanted, “There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites. There were one or two nightclubs for colored, but they were not very good” (Gaines 25). It was unjust to the blacks that they could not enjoy themselves as much as the whites because of their skin color.

Maria W. Stewart Analysis In this excerpt of a lecture given by Maria W. Stewart in the year 1832, she has a strong point: Although the African Americans in the northern colonies were free, they were not treated equal as the white people were. Stewart uses a variety of rhetorical strategies to bring her point in the situation, such as argument, compare and contrast, and appeal to ethos. Along with the persistent and serious tone, it is clear that she sees the unfair treatment of African Americans a major problem.

They were had no desire for blacks to have rights and felt that they should be slaves. By attacking, burning their homes and killing blacks in the north and