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Summary Of Trail Of Tears By Ta-Nehisi Coates

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“If I was not innocent… then they were not innocent. Could this mix of motivation also affect the stories they tell? The cities they built? The country they claimed as given to them by God?” (Coates 30 ). Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a letter to his son explaining innocence. He tells him how the destroyers of his black body will hardly be held accountable for their actions. He explains how the people who have the authority to protect and serve this country are also capable of harming innocent people. Coates uses the Middle Passage, Trail of Tears, Michael Brown, and the Civil War to explain about innocence. Coates mentions the Middle passage and the Trail of Tears as how it is being viewed as though it was something that naturally occurred. He explains how Americans view racism as a natural phenomenon that innocently occurred. “Racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is …show more content…

“But American reunion was built on a comfortable narrative that made enslavement into benevolence… kind of sport in which one could conclude that both sides conducted their affairs with courage, honor, and élan. This lie of the Civil War is the lie of innocence, is the Dream” (Coates 102). He explains how the Civil War is thought of where things occurred naturally and innocently. The fact is, it’s not. America is built on lies, trying to make enslavement as a thing of kindness, where mass slaughter on both sides is thought of something done with honor. Coates says how the reason he is obsessed with the Civil War is because the people who taught him about it decided to leave imported details out (Coates 106). By saying this, he is able to explain how unfair and wrong their education was. Could it be that the reason they would conceal some major details about the war is because they knew what they did was wrong? For this reason Coates uses the reference of the Civil War in his book to explain

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Would you be able to walk 2,200 miles at the age of four? Rebecca Smith Neugin is the survivor in this story. She withstood the long journey called the “Trail of Tears”. This expedition started in Georgia and ended in Oklahoma. This event occurred because soldiers kicked her family, and herself out of their house.

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After reading Native Americans and the “Middle Ground,” I realized how narratives of historians are quick to shame and blame Native Americans in history. This article begins by revealing how European settlement presented the Indians as obstacles. Recent historians, such as Gary Nash, show the Native Americans as being conquered by the Europeans. Author of The Middle Ground, Richard White, seems to be one of the first to examine the culture of Native Americans and the relationship between colonists. White writes about the “middle ground” of the politics and trade that is eventually established.

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The Choctaws, Mississippi's largest Indian group, were the first southeastern Indians to accept removal with the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in September 1830. The treaty provided that the Choctaws would receive land west of the Mississippi River in exchange for the remaining Choctaw lands in Mississippi. In the winter of 1830, Choctaws began migrating to Indian Territory along the "Trail of tears. " The westward migrations continued over the following decades, and Indians remaining in Mississippi were forced to flee their communal land-holdings in return for small individually owned allotments.

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The Civil War was a war between the divided United States. Although it may have been to “preserve the Union”, the underlying problem of the war - a problem that had been simmering for years - was slavery. Lincoln had been cautious at the beginning of the war to not upset the border states, but near the end he added the emancipation of slaves to the Union’s war goals. Part of the reason that the North won the Civil War was due to the number of resources that they produced, the release of the Emancipation Proclamation, and military leadership.

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The living legacy of the United States Civil War is a complicated time in American history one finds difficult to describe. The ramification of the war prior, during and after still haunt the current citizens who call The States their home. Tony Horwitz’s book Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War looks at the wide gap of discontent that still looms in the late 1990s. For some southerners, the Confederacy still lives on through reenactments, stories and beliefs. For others in the South, reminders the land was dedicated to the Confederacy spark hatred and spite.

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Many people forget that African Americans in this country have been enslaved for longer than they have been free. Coates reminds his son to not forget their important history and that they will continuously struggle for freedom over their own bodies. They must learn to live within a black body. These struggles can be seen in the racial profiling and brutality among police officers in cases such as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and countless of others. He goes on to describe his childhood and how fear was the root of black existence.

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Trail of Tears What does “Nu na da ul tsun yi” mean in Choctaw? “Nu na da ul tsun yi” means “place where they cried”. What is a genocide? A genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

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What was the Trail of Tears? The Trail of Tears was in 1838 to 1839. It was part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian Policy. The Cherokee were forced to give up their land east of the Mississippi River and were forced to migrate somewhere in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee then called this movement the “Trail of Tears”, because of the horrible effects they faced.

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