Reconstruction: America after the Civil War- Reaction

    During class today, we watched a video about Americas reconstruction process after the Civil War. It started off with a story of a man who hated African Americans, so he went in a church and shot the churchgoers. This started the rise of African Americans talking about their experiences during the Civil War and how traumatizing it was to have no rights and a black mother with kids who were treated without respect. This part of the movie starts to ride on our emotions and in creases the viewers empathy for the tough situation. 

    

    Being an enslaved African American during the Civil War was a dangerous and scary time. They could be killed, raped, beaten at any point in time because of their skin color. Many women dealt with the lose of their children getting sold or taken from them, getting beaten by men, and even worse. The mental trauma that will continue throughout the next few decades is shown greatly in this piece by graphically depicting the events that took place during this time. 

    Later on in history, we slowly start to move towards reconstruction after the Civil War when the president starts to expand America. We start to move away from the ideas of slavery and humans owning humans, America gets expanded when new land is found and bought, which leads to the idea that slavery will not be passed on to the new land in America. The particular reason for this circumstance is the fact that the South surrendered during the Civil War, so the North won with its ideas to leave slavery in the past. Therefore, this meant we are moving away from slavery when we move into the new land of America. 

    

    This result was a huge step for the relationship between black and white people, considering the white slaveowners started to build relationships with the black slaves and hardly considered them slaves anymore. Many children began to grow up with more freedoms and rights, but in no means is segregation over. The children of slavery will grow up to have to help build America to equality, since segregation is now going to be in their future. We can see this idea start to rise near the end of the movie when they talk about the results of slavery being changed as the country expands. 

    Overall, this movie was a great way to showcase the violence and trauma that black people went through during slavery and how hate can control a group of peoples lives. This was a sad and intriguing movie to watch because of how we now can empathize with the African Americans and cannot understand the past actions of white people.