Black Women Vs. White Women In The Reconstruction Period
Black Women vs White Women in the Reconstruction Period
Women were completely controlled by the men in their lives. First, by their fathers, brothers and male relatives and finally by their husbands. Their sole purpose in life is to find a husband, reproduce and then spend the rest of their lives serving him. If a woman were to decide to remain single, she would be ridiculed and pitied by the community. Some people believe it is a form of slavery. “To me, the sun in the heavens at noonday is not more visible than is the right of women, equally with man, to participate in all that concerns human welfare.” These are words of Frederick Douglas, who was a former slave and a women's rights activist. In the nineteenth century, most Americans assumed that there was a natural order on society which placed women in totally different spheres. Women were considered second class citizens. A second-class citizen is a person who is discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there. Which would sound a lot like slavery, and some people actually believed that the way women were treated was similar to slavery. When women were married all of her inheritance was given to her husband, and she was to “share” it with her husband and family. The women were hard workers and …show more content…
did everything around the house.
Postbellum America promised African American women a new life of freedom with the same inalienable rights provided to other American citizens.
But the realities of newly freed people in the south—who had little or no money, limited or no education and little access to it, who confronted systemic racism that impacted every area of their lives and for whom the federal government failed to provide any reparational assistance, made that promise appear extraordinarily remote. The black women who emerged from enslavement “knew that what they got wasn’t what they wanted, it wasn’t freedom, really.” (“Claiming Their
Citizenship…”)
The transition from enslavement to freedom was a difficult and frightening one for most black women. Women who migrated to the industrial north were confronted with racism but they also benefited from supportive community networks and settlement houses such as the White Rose Mission that Victoria Earle Mathews, pioneering journalist and daughter of a self-emancipated woman, established in New York City for girls and women of color in need of housing and resources. According to “claiming their citizenship” Many women of color who entered the northern and urban work forces also were undermined by the increasingly popular practice of factory employers relying on workers who yielded to their authority over working conditions. I saw a movie called “the help” it was about black women and the jobs that they had, they would work extremely hard for little amounts of money. The white men and women would treat them like slaves.
In the movie “the help” one of the white women were extremely rude to her maid. The maid took care of the white woman's child, and basically raised the children. According to “White Sexual Violence against Enslaved Black Women…” Historians have estimated that at least 58% of all enslaved women between 15 and 30 years of age were sexually assaulted by white men during the antebellum period. In addition to the white male privilege and power evident in this extensive routine rape of black female slaves, the reactions of white women to their husbands’ sexual behavior helped perpetuate racial and gender subordination as well as white privilege. When I read something like this it makes me think that maybe black women were treated completely worse than the white women at this time. I am sure it has some truth, they were both obviously treated terrible but the white woman did have a lot of advantages over the black women. Which ironically According to "White Sexual Violence against Enslaved Black Women” Most of the mixing of the races took place after the civil war, after the slaves were freed. That means that the white man, would get the black women pregnant more often, then when the rapes were happening. I believe that nowadays, black and white people have the same opportunities as each other. I know that there are protests about racism, and about black lives matter. Well they obviously do, we had a war that divided our country for crying out loud. Racism does exist, and it did exist in the 1800’s. The women were treated terrible, luckily we have passed that. But what I have learned, is that the black and white women were treated different.
Women were completely controlled by the men in their lives. First, by their fathers, brothers and male relatives and finally by their husbands. Their sole purpose in life is to find a husband, reproduce and then spend the rest of their lives serving him. If a woman were to decide to remain single, she would be ridiculed and pitied by the community. Some people believe it is a form of slavery. “To me, the sun in the heavens at noonday is not more visible than is the right of women, equally with man, to participate in all that concerns human welfare.” These are words of Frederick Douglas, who was a former slave and a women's rights activist. In the nineteenth century, most Americans assumed that there was a natural order on society which placed women in totally different spheres. Women were considered second class citizens. A second-class citizen is a person who is discriminated against within a state or other political jurisdiction, despite their nominal status as a citizen or legal resident there. Which would sound a lot like slavery, and some people actually believed that the way women were treated was similar to slavery. When women were married all of her inheritance was given to her husband, and she was to “share” it with her husband and family. The women were hard workers and …show more content…
did everything around the house.
Postbellum America promised African American women a new life of freedom with the same inalienable rights provided to other American citizens.
But the realities of newly freed people in the south—who had little or no money, limited or no education and little access to it, who confronted systemic racism that impacted every area of their lives and for whom the federal government failed to provide any reparational assistance, made that promise appear extraordinarily remote. The black women who emerged from enslavement “knew that what they got wasn’t what they wanted, it wasn’t freedom, really.” (“Claiming Their
Citizenship…”)
The transition from enslavement to freedom was a difficult and frightening one for most black women. Women who migrated to the industrial north were confronted with racism but they also benefited from supportive community networks and settlement houses such as the White Rose Mission that Victoria Earle Mathews, pioneering journalist and daughter of a self-emancipated woman, established in New York City for girls and women of color in need of housing and resources. According to “claiming their citizenship” Many women of color who entered the northern and urban work forces also were undermined by the increasingly popular practice of factory employers relying on workers who yielded to their authority over working conditions. I saw a movie called “the help” it was about black women and the jobs that they had, they would work extremely hard for little amounts of money. The white men and women would treat them like slaves.
In the movie “the help” one of the white women were extremely rude to her maid. The maid took care of the white woman's child, and basically raised the children. According to “White Sexual Violence against Enslaved Black Women…” Historians have estimated that at least 58% of all enslaved women between 15 and 30 years of age were sexually assaulted by white men during the antebellum period. In addition to the white male privilege and power evident in this extensive routine rape of black female slaves, the reactions of white women to their husbands’ sexual behavior helped perpetuate racial and gender subordination as well as white privilege. When I read something like this it makes me think that maybe black women were treated completely worse than the white women at this time. I am sure it has some truth, they were both obviously treated terrible but the white woman did have a lot of advantages over the black women. Which ironically According to "White Sexual Violence against Enslaved Black Women” Most of the mixing of the races took place after the civil war, after the slaves were freed. That means that the white man, would get the black women pregnant more often, then when the rapes were happening. I believe that nowadays, black and white people have the same opportunities as each other. I know that there are protests about racism, and about black lives matter. Well they obviously do, we had a war that divided our country for crying out loud. Racism does exist, and it did exist in the 1800’s. The women were treated terrible, luckily we have passed that. But what I have learned, is that the black and white women were treated different.