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Summary Of Gordon Under Medical Inspection

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For my HarpWeek discussion I chose to look at Gordon Under Medical Inspection. Gordon Under Medical Inspection depicts a drawing of a runaway slave getting a medical examination after having successfully escaped from the north to the south. The main focal point of the drawing are the many scares that are present on the man's back. These scares are more than likely the results of having been wiped and beaten by his previous slave owner who he had escaped from. I feel that the artist was trying to portray the cruelty of slavery, and that by showing the many scares on the runaway slaves back it is supposed to invoke a reaction of pity for the man who had been abused, and thus humanizing him in the eyes of the people. The contemporary readers who …show more content…

At the very beginning of chapter 14, the violence towards people of color was made a prominent issue for the text as it went into the Memphis attacks as celebrating freed slaves were brutally attacked and even killed by ex-Confederates. Its these extreme acts of violence agents people of color depicted in Gordon Under Medical Inspection, and what happened in Memphis that lead to the Republicans of the time to push so greatly for protections to be put in place for the now freed slaves. Unfortunately, as Republicans, as well as the now freed slaves fought to get people of color more protections and rights to prevent further incidents like the Memphis attacks, the people of the south also fought to keep some manner of control over black people so that they could continue to treat them as they wished, even if they weren't their slaves. As these two sides fought progress of reconstruction was stagnated for both sides, causing everyone to suffer because of it, but mostly the now freed slaves who had to try and make a living for themselves in places that didn't want them to be there to begin with. In the end people of color in the south would continue to face violence against them just as it was depicted in Gordon Under Medical Inspection, even after the civil war had ended, with people forgetting that the message of the drawing was that even people of color can be scared by the cruel actions of other people who wish to control

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