As we turn the pages of this book you, the reader, will find in the layout, personal comments, actual comments from other authors and statements made by individuals pertaining to the treatment received by the Negro people.
These paragraphs and statements all were aimed at the Negro, with the one purpose of making this man suffer and to remain a subservient and inferior person.
Being a freedman was all the Negro wanted, he had no idea what a freedman looked or felt like. The Negro, just after slavery, felt if given the chance, he could and would prove himself as a worthy man. On the other side, was another idea about the future of the Negro’s ideas. White America has always loved the control and use of people for profit. The capitalistic system in this country and the slave system worked extremely well. Using Negroes was a system that white America would not give up easily.
In our history we have always been told that the Southern white man was the individual who could not stand for the Negro being free. In my research, to compile the information contained in this book, I have found that whites in the North liked the slave system also and used these Negro people to bolster their bottom lines in the factories and industries that functioned throughout the country.
The period between 1866 and 1880 was very turbulent and nasty for the Negro; he had no chance of being that freeman he envisioned. The conditions the Negro encountered then is still with us today, one hundred and fifty years later.
Again, on these pages that follow, you will find many short statements that point to why Reconstruction was a failure and only because white America, North and South, did not put any effort into making the United States a better and more productive place for its Negro citizens.
Right at the point where President Lincoln made his speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, when the slaves from the war torn states were freed and the Civil War was over. In the history of the United States, this period was always called the era of Reconstruction, a very short period of time that is implanted in the minds of the American people as how much progress the Negro had or had not made.
It is very important to understand that the history of this United States of America was never documented to show the whole truth about how things were pertaining to the Negro and how they were treated. This was the most gross and pitiful waste of time any man should have had to tolerate.
From President Lincoln to President Hayes. From the Thirteenth Amendment to the Fifteenth Amendment. From the Homestead Act of 1862 to the Southern Homestead Act. The Reconstruction era of America was a failure and the treatment of the American Negro since the emancipation is proof.
Shelley Lynn Wright
The Africans say that “Only a fool points to his history with his left hand.” This means that you must know and respect where you came from. How can you truly respect yourself if you do not know or understand the struggles and trials your people surmounted for you to be here?