Abraham Lincoln’s Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery in December of 1865, however, it did not mean that racial prejudice was abolished as well. After the Civil War against the Confederate States of America, many African-Americans found themselves still helpless even though they were no longer bonded to slavery as described in W.E.B. Du Bois’s classic American work of literature, The Souls of Black Folk.  While many struggled to feed themselves after and during the Reconstruction Era, there was an emergence of identity seeking that was brought on by the recent Emancipation. White and Black people were heavily segregated in geographical neighbourhoods; social classes within the African-American emerged and also began to define communities.

IDENTITY IN MUSIC

In creating a cultural identity, African-Americans often sang folk songs, which Du Bois pitched as being the first original American music. In The Souls Of Black Folk, Du Bois has filled the pages with lyrics and short bars of music from the folk songs sung during his time. Such folk music was otherwise known under the genre of negro spritual, began to develop other various genres such as jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. Many of the songs have strong religious significance and also have hidden themes of freedom and escape.

The following is from the film, “12 Years A Slave.” The song is called “Roll, Jordan, Roll.”

Another popular example of a negro spiritual song is “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”

From the years of 1865 to 1925, negro spiritual music was almost performed exclusively in churches. While many songs sung were still under the genre of negro spiritual music, many songs that had been sung in slavery were not revisited as most African Americans did not want to be reminded of that time. When sung in churches, they were sung with mourning for the past. Before and after emancipation, this original folk music brought people together by creating a sense of community and identity to the African American population.

 

IDENTITY IN FINANCIAL STRUGGLE

Since the enforced liberation by the soldiers in the South during the ten-year Reconstruction Era, “freedom” was a strange term thrown about in the Post-Civil War days. The federal troops occupied the former Confederate land to prevent the re-enslavement of African Americans. However, once the troops left, many of the former slaves were victim to practices of involuntary servitude.

While many slaves were relieved from the bonds to their masters, many found that staying with them provided a better quality of living, so many remained working on plantations. Just because they technically had legal freedom and independence, didn’t mean their struggles were close to being over. Former slaves were penniless and had no means to feed themselves without tools or money. Being free did not give ownership over anything except one’s self.

Du Bois comments on this phenomenon in stating, “What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals – not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free!” (142) Even though African American people were free from slavery, their living conditions were so helpless that former slaves returned to their former masters’ plantations and continued to work for them in order to be fed.

The African Americans were not necessarily slaves anymore, but the dynamics and relationship between the employer and worker became very different.  Instead, a form of serfdom was implemented where metayers would work fields and be offered little compensation for their work in order to barely feed themselves. This form of farming business was known as sharecropping where a crop owner could place extreme limitations upon a metayer and even go so far as to whip the worker for leaving the plantation. The medieval idea of serfdom was a small step forward, and some African-Americans even found themselves graduating to the social class of poverty.

 

IDENTITY IN THE BLACK BELT

What started out as a name referring to a geographical stretch of land with dark rich soils used for agriculture, the Black Belt became a community area where many African Americans settled. In the beginning of 1873, a worldwide economic recession known as the Long Depression took a toll on the economy of agriculture. Many plantations failed because the price of cotton had crashed, and therefore cotton farms were found to be unprofitable. Laden with what were known as cash crops (tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton), the Black Belt soon became one of the nation’s poorest regions with the steep decline of the agricultural industry. The African Americans who had, or were, working on plantations settled in these southern areas not too far from where they had been enslaved.

While there are many definitions of the location known as the Black Belt, one of the earliest and most popular ideas is from Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography, Up From Slavery:

“The term was first used to designate a part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense—that is, to designate the counties where the black people outnumber the white.”

Even though all ethnicities were affected, the African American residents of the Black Belt were most susceptible to the dramatic failure of farms, poverty, illness, unemployment, and crime. Some have considered the Black Belt more as a “national territory” for African Americans within the United States. Through the proximity of the Black Belt, African American communities had the opportunity to form post slavery, and created intimate niches to support one another through financial hardship.

 IDENTITY IN OPPOSITION OF THE CAUSIAN POPULATION

Even within the community of the Black Belt, African Americans were not immune to brutal segregation and racism inflicted by nearby Caucasian neighborhoods. In enduring the racial prejudice of the Caucasian communities, African Americans were safer united in numbers, and thus built a stronger sense of belonging amongst one another.

While a legal justice system was present in the south around the turn of the century, it was extremely corrupt. Racial prejudices took over and resulted in white and black people distrusting each other even more. Du Bois depicts the attitudes of the courtroom where a white jury would rather convict 10 innocent African American men that let a guilty one slip free. Angered by this unfairness, the African American community would then always side with the black man who was convicted, negligent of whether he was innocent or not. Even if he were guilty, the black population would respond by seeing him as being “crucified rather than hanged.” (145) This contributed to segregate communities between the White and the Black due to the ever growing distrust of one another.

With an intense look at societal dynamics before the turn of the century, Du Bois expressed the idea that African-Americans wanted to be involved in the land of opportunity that America was supposed to be. However, at the same time, African-American communities wanted to maintain their racial heritage and culture and not be corrupted by America’s “whiteness.” But unfortunately, as Du Bois states, “American [was] not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.” (140) In this slowly changing form in terms of National identity, the early African-American experience post-slavery still maintained a heavy amount of ostracism from the Caucasian population.

Even to this day, many African Americans battle prejudices formulated from hundreds of years ago. While the idea of African American identity has transformed a lot since the days of emancipation, communities continue to work together to achieve equal treatment and rights.

CITATIONS

Claudia D. Goldin and Frank D. Lewis (1975). The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications. The Journal of Economic History, 35, pp 299-326. doi:10.1017/S0022050700075070.

“Slavery in America.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2014

“Booker T. Washington. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography.” Booker T. Washington. Up From Slavery: An Autobiography. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

“Between 1865 and 1925.” Song Official Site of Negro Spirituals, Antique Gospel Music. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

“An Antebellum Dilemma Uncovered – Part Two.” – William A. Percy. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

“The Late 1800s.” Some US Literature and a Few Environments RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.

“Reconstruction.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.

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“Chapter 13.” Chapter 13. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. .sjsapush.com/ch13.php

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