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Blacks In The South Dbq Essay

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Being treated as an inferior species with no worth must have been difficult, but after years of you and your ancestors being whipped for every wrongdoing, would it really be that bad? The answer is yes, yes it would. A few years after the revolutionary war had ended, the Northerners began to see that slavery was wrong. They slowly decided it would be best for the slaves to be set free. As stated in the background essay, "By the early 1800s most Northern blacks were legally free, and by the time of the Civil War, the North had largely forgotten its slave past. However, even without the institution of slavery, the life of a black person in the North was not easy. Discrimination and prejudice were a problem." So, how free were the free blacks in the North? Did they have the same amount of voting rights, economic rights, or the rights to leave their homes as the whites of the North? The answer is simple, blacks in the North had very limited political, social and economic freedoms …show more content…

Black men had trouble finding jobs because the men hiring thought they inferior. " 'We are of another race, and he is inferior. Let him know his place – and keep it (Document B).' ” A big reason the black men had trouble finding jobs was that the hiring men kept segregation as a deciding factor. The same young man who didn't know where his life was going also was struggling to find a job. "To what shall I turn my hand? Shall I be a mechanic? No one will employ me; white boys won't work with me. Shall I be a merchant? So one will have in his office; white clerks won't associate with me (Document C)." Even being the most educated person graduating in his time, this black young man would be beaten out of any possible job by any white man who wanted it. The discouragement brought from the little to no economic freedom blacks had compared to whites must have been nauseating to the black people looking for

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