Brittney Woods

12 Million Black Voices

-in this reading the word “Negro” was referred to as an island.

-it told how negro’s were inferior to the whites, and also an insult.

-Even after freedom, slavery still left pain and shock in the inheritors and it would continue for a long time after.

-They talk about the beautiful days, in the trees and flowers and how nice things were; but not for them, their days were spent laboring.

-Horrible living conditions/ limited means.

*Three classes of men above the “black” man:

1. Lords of the Land: operators or the plantation.
2. Bosses of the Buildings: the owners of industry.
3. And the vast number of poor white workers-black man’s immediate competitors in the daily race for bread.

-After the Emancipation Proclamation, some 4,000,000 black people were left stranded and destitute without knowing what to do they were force to turn back to their same slave owners and beg for work.

-During the 1^st decade of the 20^th century, more than one and three-quarter million black people abandoned the plantations where they were born.

     *more than a million black people roamed the states in the south and the rest drifted to the north.

- The woman got along better than the men in the early days of freedom; in most families their authority was supreme.

     *In slavery time, the women who were married were often taken from their husbands for the Land owners pleasures. If the husbands were sold of the plantation the wives were not sold with them so they were kept by their masters and the men had to find a new mate.