From: Tasheeva Drayton
Date: 4/13/00
Time: 1:22:08 AM
Remote Name: 155.247.152.33
Tasheeva Drayton
How well did the African Americans cope with being slaves in America South? Did free blacks suffer as well as slaves?
Slaves in the South were used to the institution of slavery and they did try to cope with it by becoming spiritual. Their faith is all they had to believe in. They held church or just a gathering whenever they could. This was all they had to hold on to in order to keep their sanity. They dealt with slavery but they never learned to just accept it. Many slaves made attempts to escape some of them successfully. They traveled the infamous underground railroad to the North where they thought freedom was at. In the North African Americans were free meaning no chains and shackles, no masters, but really free they were not. The free African Americans suffered just as much as the slaves. They tried to fight to get slavery abolished but only to a certain extent they didn’t want to jeopardize their freedom. They felt that as long as slavery existed their own rights were likely to be denied even their freedom was at risk. Their thinking was right because even though they were free they were forced to get a white person as their guardians in the south. All over blacks were treated as social outcasts and denied legal and political equality. Public facilities were segregated. Blacks were not allowed to vote in four New England states. The job market was not good either. Blacks could not find decent jobs; they were hired for jobs as casual day labor or domestic service. Blacks were excluded from public schools, federal government didn’t allow them to enlist in the military or work postal jobs. Even though they were free they faced a whole new way of being oppressed. They shared the same pain that the slaves did just in a different form. It was just as bad to be free as it was to be a slave.