Essays on Sharecropping

When asked to view the documentary Slavery by Another Name, I was expecting to see something about prisoners being used in forced labor by some other country. I was clearly not expecting it to be about the treatment of African Americans in the United States after the Emancipation Proclamation. Based on my understanding of American history, I believed that after the Civil War, African Americans had some struggles, but they were free. I understood that there was still discrimination, especially in the American South, but the former slaves at least had the opportunity to make a living on their ...

Reconstruction, in the US history, is the period (1865-77) immediately after the American civil war. It was during this period that the undoing of slavery to all other sectors of the American economy was put into perspective. 11 states had also been readmitted to the union despite the fact that they had earlier receded. This period saw the dignity of black people restored to some extent, and this was greatly fastened by radical republicans. Those who support an interracial democracy have been shown to applaud this period almost in its entirety. As such, this can be taken to be ...

The History of Cotton in America

Historically, the cotton production in the United States has experienced times of entrepreneurial developments from England’s cotton clothes and yarn. When the factories began operation, the price of cotton fell drastically to ensure affordability of the clothes by the poor people. The lowered price of cotton saw the rise of demand that necessitated England to demand more cotton. America at this era did not have a large base of cotton production until 1830 when the South started large-scale production of cotton. England benefited from 70 percent of this production while the rest remained in the nation for local production. ...

1877 Compromise and Disenfranchising the African American Workers

In South, Blacks got freedom but they never gained equality. Despite radical attempts of Republicans during Reconstruction, southern blacks struggled with unemployment, illiteracy and poverty. With waning reconstruction efforts condition of free men further worsened. With closing of Freedmen’s Bureau, restriction on voting like literacy tests and poll taxes further proliferated and racist violence further spread. In 1880, Discrimination in southern states intensified after passing of Jim Crow Laws. This law started to segregate public accommodations like steamboats, trains, schools and streetcars, and Blacks were forbidden or restricted to access ...

Analysis of the Cotton Pickers

Thomas Hart Benton, a famous Regionalist artist who was known as one of the members of the “Regionalist Triumvirate”, created an oil painting called Cotton Pickers, in 1945. This is a typical work to show an African American labor’s life and the sharecropping system of agriculture during the first decades of the 20th century. According the notes of his trip in Georgia in the late 1920s, Benton depicted a scene of cotton pickers working with dry soil under summer heat through curve line, and realistic shapes. Following the regionalist tradition Benton avoids subjects like the city life and technological advances and ...

Introduction

Roots is actually a television miniseries in United States that is based on the novel called Roots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley’s. This series was first aired in the year 1977. It is also an award winning series as it has received thirty seven Emmy Awards nominations and out of this it has won nine. This is an epic movie that after watching it, I have learned various historical issues such as slavery and its history. The plot of this TV miniseries is organized in such a way that when watching you get entertained. In ...

Introduction

The social consequences of slavery in both the colonial and antebellum America were profoundly immense. This essay reviews the nature and impact of slavery throughout the Colonial and Antebellum America in accordance with the information contained in the historical primary sources detailed in Eric Foner’s Voices of Freedom. The four primary sources reviewed in this essay include Colloquy with Colored Ministries, Mississippi Black Code, Sharecropping Contract and the Composite Nation. All the documents in Foner’s book are documents of considerable length containing words spoken or written by the American men and women enmeshed inside America’s dark ...

The Great Migration of the black people in the United States from the South cities to the North cities took place in two parts; the first and the second migration. The first Great Migration of Africa American people started from 1914 to 1929. Before the Great Migration took place nearly 90% population of the black population lived in the rural southern region of the United States. The major factors that impelled the black people to move northwards were cruel segregationist laws and inadequate economic opportunities in the rural south. The restoration of segregationist policies also referred as Jim ...

Arguably, after the civil war in America, the entire nation, especially the south faced a difficult era in rebuilding its economy, dealing with freed African American slaves, as well as rebuilding of the government. The reconstruction process included change of labor systems, agricultural systems, as well as sharecropping. The progressive changes were objectively focused in rebuilding a new America. After the civil war, many resources were needed to rebuild the nation; in fact, the 1870s depression worsened the situation. This is because many farmers experienced tremendous decrease in crop prices and production, with cotton production dropping by approximately fifty percent in ...

With the political history of the United States as its organizational framework, "American Nation ‘’ describes the advancement and growth of the United States as the product of the myriad actions, views, and forces of the immense variety of individuals and groups who together comprise of the American people. In broader detailed prose, the book examines the political, social, economic, and cultural developments and growth that have shaped the United States. Below is the summary of the first fourteen chapters of the book ‘’American Nation’’ and the contrast of the past and present historical analogy: According to chapter five ...