Foner Reading Response

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Griselda Salas
HIST 202B
Reading Response: Foner Pages 550-561

This chapter talked about the definition of what freedom meant to the now freed slaves. During reconstruction, African Americans had a new sense of freedom that they were able to use to make changes in politics. The era of Reconstruction was “radical for its time” because it attempted to include ex-slaves as citizens in the United States’ society at the time. To the African Americans, their definition of what freedom meant was very clear. In order to be truly free, African Americans felt that economic independence, right to land, right to vote, and other civil rights were essential. However, this new and small sense of freedom changed the way the African Americans lived their lives. Black institutions were strengthened because they were no longer under constant white supervision, and black women were able to become housewives and devote more …show more content…
The Foner reading talks about the effect that the end of slavery had on American society at the time. To begin, the book addresses that even though the U.S. was a “free society” many white land and plantation owners worked to keep a labor system that could be as close as they wanted to slavery with out it technically being slavery. Despite this, African Americans demanded that owning their own land was a prerequisite to being free. Many Black Americans were still made to work on plantations (though not technically slaves) because they did not have any land to work on for themselves. To African Americans, jobs weren’t just what they wanted; they wanted to be able to create their own jobs through the land that they will own. Of course, white Americans did not agree with that and passed laws called the Black Codes that said that African Americans could have certain civil rights but were still not equal to white Americans in any
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