Interview Summary: Slavery Before The Civil War

Carl Stearne
Professor Byrn
History 18
2 May 2014
Interview Paper
Before the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery ran rapid throughout the United States. Slave owners treated their slaves as animals and deemed them as barbarian. It is argued that since it would have been cheaper if Whites had others perform free labor, Whites would have traded goods and war prisoners with the African leaders. The result of this, created a system of slavery far more degrading than any other form of servitude in mankind. Enslavement caused men and women to write about their lives in captivity so that it could be past down to the generations. Each one of the narratives gave readers a first-hand account of how blacks were treated. These specific narratives
were known as the antebellum era narratives because they were written before the civil war.
Writers in the antebellum era wrote stories that portrayed slavery as physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining because how they were treated in those days. Often times these writers would be stripped away from their families due to their family members being bought and sold to another slave owner. Their faith in God in those times was imperative enabling them to bare the harsh reality of slavery that they went through day by day. Slaves wrote poems and speeches to tell the world about how they felt during that time. The commercialization of many of these narratives was mind-blowing. These pieces of work would sell by the tens of thousands. It is argued that the most popular of these antebellum writers were Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs and many others. These writers spoke how blacks survived in slavery and hoped to one day flee to a free state or even get out of the country. Powerful, intellectual writers and thinkers such as Benjamin Banneker and other writers in this time period wrote various pieces of writing to prove to the whites that blacks could very well become literate. Although this went on in the antebellum era, things for blacks did not get much better after the civil war except that slavery was no more.
The reason why it is known to be that way is because the slave owners did not see blacks as being human beings. White supremacy was the philosophy of Americans during that time. African-Americans were still treated in this way even after the civil war. For example: It was hard for Whites to accept the fact that African-Americans are to be equal, so blacks had to watch their homes and their families to protect themselves from whites using violence. In addition, because of the Jim Crow Laws, Blacks could not use the same restrooms, water fountains, or even sleep in the same hotels. Blacks did accomplish getting slavery abolished but as for the equality of blacks they still had a long way to go in the late 20th century. However, because of the Civil Rights Movement Blacks obtained their equality through the hard work of many men and women.

During the 1940s Lois Stearne my grandmother was very young.
She told me that her dad was a cook during those times. She lived in a small house in Memphis, Tennessee along with her seven brothers and sisters. She lived a very simple life by just going to school and coming home cooking and helping her dad around the house. Her mother died in child birth, so sadly she never knew her mother. She however, looked just her mother; so when her dad seen her he always told her she was beautiful just like her mother. My grandmother said she loved to help her father out by cooking at home while he was at work. She told me he’s father was a great cook and how during that time what he did was one of the only few jobs blacks could have at that time. “My father could really cook some fried chicken; he had to be one of the best cooks in town.”(Lois Stearne) She was the youngest of them all, and she told me how she hated to be picking on by them. She told me that her and her siblings use to always get into because they would pick on her about how her hair was too short. My grandmother didn’t have many friends in her early childhood her father was very protective and had them stay home. Back in those days, neighbors would watch over the kids in the neighborhood when the parents were away at work or some activity. When she could go out she also informed me about how she could get a bag of candy for twenty five cents during that time. She told me everything was very affordable during that
time. When she told me that that absolutely baffled me and caused me to wish our money in the present time could go that far. During elementary school Lois Stearne attended an all-black school. She learned how to read and write and do what they called back in those days arithmetic. She told me she was very good at reading and writing but not so good at the math. She had to get another little girl to help her with her math problems. My Grandmother was raised in the church and was taught to treat everyone right. Later in life when she moved to California she was a supporter in the civil rights movement. My grandmother told me the Civil rights movements are perhaps one of the most influential movements that happened in our country. In addition my grandmother met my grandfather in California. My grandfather was in the military and fought in the Korean War. He served four years in the military before retiring from the military and getting a job at the post office for more than 30 years. After that he retired from there and lived nice until he died of cancer. She went on and said the movement was a time when African Americans came together to make change and create better opportunity for all blacks in our country. In addition she said men and woman alike did their part to change the rules of the land and allow African Americans to do things that for a long time blacks couldn’t do because of the segregations. She went on and said sadly even though slavery was abolished; people in the United States still found a way to make black men and woman inferior whites. She explained to me how people who were locked out of the formal political route due to racial obstacles were able to mount abundant campaigns over three decades to exterminate racial unfairness and in the process transform the nation. In its greatest accomplishment, the Civil Rights Movement effectively eliminated the American apartheid.
Furthermore, she have gave me an example of the way whites made African American men and woman and children to sit in the back of the bus just because of their skin color. She told me however, woman like Rosa Park made a huge difference in that, and became a leader in ways they would have never imagined. These woman wanted change and got that over years of hard work and dedication by having other African American’s to join in and decided not to ride the bus, instead walk to their destinations. African American woman played a big role in the civil rights movement and perhaps it would not have turned out the same without their courage acts of bravery and a longing for a better tomorrow. She told me that from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, black women were in a difficult position. She went on to say between the civil rights and feminist movements, no one could really understand and comprehend where they could have possibly fit in to this whole movement. Furthermore, she went on and told me African American men had been the backbone of the civil rights movement, but their contributions were deemphasized as black men often emasculated by white society felt compelled to adopt male-controlled roles. When black women flocked to the feminist movement, white women discriminated against them and devoted little attention to class issues that seriously affected black women, who tended to also be poor. Historically, black women have chosen race over gender concerns, a choice that was especially poignant during Reconstruction when African American female leaders, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, supported the Fifteenth Amendment giving black men the right to vote over the objections of white women suffragists.
She later showed me a video of how Black women have a long feminist ritual dating back to 19th-century campaigners such as Maria W. Stewart and Sojourner Truth as well as establishments like the National Association of Colored Women 's Clubs (NACWC) and the National Council of Negro Women, founded in 1896 and 1935, respectively. Events of the 1960s and 1970s, not to mention black men 's changing attitudes regarding the role of black women, focused awareness around new concerns such as race, gender, and class, and several organizations. She explained to me the importance of black people bonding together. A major reason for the movement’s success was its religious leadership. The Reverends Martin Luther King Jr, Andrew Young, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt T. Walker, Joseph Lowery, and Jesse Jackson were just a few of the gifted religious figures who played a national leadership role in the movement. In many instances black clergy became the spokespeople for campaigns articulating the grievances of black people, and they became the strategists who shaped the objectives and methods of the movement that sought to redress those grievances. Furthermore, they were able to win the allegiance of a large number of people and convince them to make great sacrifices for racial justice. The Civil Rights Movement was one of these shifts that transformed the attitudes of the majority of American citizens and made them realize that all people were entitled to pursue the American dream.
People had been living a fairly conservative way in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Blacks didn 't have legal equality. Many women didn 't work outside the home. Most people obeyed their parents and trusted the government. People were just letting the government do what they wanted to do, because it was a safe. African American’s never really understood what real freedom was and would be in the future. The civil rights movement was a heroic episode in American history. The civil rights movement aimed to give African Americans the same citizenship rights that whites took for granted. It was a war waged on many fronts. In the 1960s it achieved impressive judicial and legislative victories against discrimination in public places and voting. It had less complete but still significant success in battling job and housing discrimination. Those best able to take advantage of new opportunities were middle-class blacks the teachers, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who had served as role models for the black community. Their departure for formerly all-white areas left all-black neighborhoods segregated not only by race but now also by class. The problem of poverty, compounded by drugs, crime, and broken families, was not solved by the civil rights
movement. . She told me that segregation was common in these times. It was an idea of separate but equals which many writers and thinkers such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many other intellectuals. In time periods had a main goal of becoming equal to whites and showing that blacks could obtain literacy and could work right along with the whites. Black writers in that era wanted the reader to see what they had experienced in those times. In doing this, their legacy would be passed down from generation to generation and they would have documented written accounts. My grandmother told me to remember my past and to past it down to the next generation.

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