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White Supremacy In The Cotton Kingdom

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The South remains keen throughout the adventures of Olmsted in The Cotton Kingdom. Olmsted picks specific descriptions in his encounters to elaborate that white supremacy still exists. Several people he encounters are not slave owners that he gets their opinion. His encounters illustrates that not everyone agreed on the idea of slavery. Yet, one individual admits slavery is wrong despite owning slaves. An owner of servants elaborates that she treats them well. Everyone did not treat their African Americans poorly. Division is seen here. Southerners did run farms differently based on infrastructure. In the Cotton Kingdom, the south contains ideas that white supremacy still exists, slaves are treated differently, and farms ran differently based …show more content…

Beginning with an example of a woman who owns slaves in Texas. This woman describes how “the north talked about how badly the slaves were treated; she wishes that people could see how much work her girls did” (Inscoe 129). This lady is formally from the North. She claims to treat her servants with respect. She even pays her servants with wages for house work. The wages add up to almost eight dollars a month. Another account involves the Virginia slave trade. African Americans in this section are seen being handcuffed walking along the road. These slaves are to be sold at the market in Virginia. Olmsted in this section states this is the first auction he experienced in months (Inscoe 45). He did experience other auctions prior to this one. The south in areas typically ran auctions for African Americans. Over time slaves can be separated from their family. Even if separation occurs that does not mean that slaves can adapt to other …show more content…

On a sugar plantation, many slaves will work a hard season in October to which they will grind sugar. The slaves will work hard for the next three to four months. That does not mean slaves did not have breaks. African Americans on this plantation did get to rest for at least six hours in a twenty four hour period. Working on a sugar plantation is a lot of work. Aside from Olmsted’s writing on slaves, Jennie Kendrick’s slave narrative from Georgia, describes that her plantation worked with cotton and corn (Project 1941). African Americans here wore clothes that is made on the plantation. The main aspect of this narrative is that slaves working in the fields came in around noon to eat in a kitchen. They got to eat food during the day. That is unlike the African Americans mentioned before. These examples of slavery provide information that slave’s may receive other opportunities than those on other plantations. It depends on how the work needs to be done. On the Moore plantation, where Jennie grew up there is leisure time to experience. Southern Cotton Plantations did not always end up that way. Masters on other plantations may not be that lenient on free time.
In conclusion, slavery in the south still includes white supremacy, treatment of slaves, and how plantations worked. The different thoughts on slavery mentions that several people did not agree that slavery is a curse to the country. There is the treatment

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