Watching now. This doc on the Reconstruction era on @PBS is so interesting.
What we don’t learn in school bout The Civil War. Many...MANY enslaved folks fled the South to fight for the Union army. Enslaved folks were not just freed. We fought for the Union in such huge numbers...and left the fields in the South in such huge numbers...
...slavery was coming to an end one way or another. Through the revolts of the enslaved...or from folks fleeing to fight for the English...or the Yankies. We fought for our own damn freedom. And we’ve never stopped.
“When Black men were finally allowed to enlist in the Union army, 180k answered the call.” In 18 whatever the hell...that was a LOT of Black Men. And I assume many of them brought loved ones with them. Wasn’t no ‘layin down & taking it’ ever. EVER.
So the Union army had all this extra, Black man power, and the South’s economy was in shambles because so many enslaved folks left to fight. #ReconstructionPBS
So Reconstruction was supposed to be about Reconstructing America. Bringing the South back into the family. But oh...what about those millions of newly freed Enslaved Black people...what to do with them? #ReconstructionPBS
Then the question of WHO is a citizen & what rights come with citizenship came up. Again because of this country’s history, there are very FEW major movements that have been started in this country, that did not involve Black Americans leading the charge. Bcuz duh.
Things that newly freed Black people were concerned about? Education, worker’s rights & land ownership. Oh because most poor white children were also not in school. Only rich white children were.
Then Lincoln was assasinated.
Jesus. Then newly enslaved folks immediately began searching for loved ones that had been sold away. A mother searching for her two small children who’d been sold away from her. When I went to visit the @WhitneyPlant (one of the only plantation tours to focus on enslaved ppl) ...
...the tour leader said (it was either Nola or the whole state of Louisiana) that plantations around that area let kids stay with their mother’s until 10 before they sold them off. I guess that was something...good? Then again...that means it was completely normal to have...
...your newborn, 2yr old or 5yr old sold away. That was completely fine. So immediately after the Civil War & into Reconstruction...newly freed Black ppl went searching for their family members. I just...folks say they don’t want “slave stories” anymore. But...but...
...how is that not erasing these stories or courage & strength because of our own shame? The shame isn’t ours. It never was.
Folks put ads in papers looking for mothers & fathers they hadn’t seen in 30 years. Husbands. Wives. Children. Siblings. Imagine that. Millions of ppl newly free. Searching for their ppl who were taken from them. Many of whom they’d never see again.
My thread on my visit to the @WhitneyPlant is on here if ya’ll want to search it but...on my first visit, the tour guide was talking to a woman who’d asked about marriage. She thought enslaved folks fell in love & just started families. The tour guide’s face after that ?...😩
Andrew Johnson & Andrew Jackson were 2 different white men. Okay. Good to know.
Whew I guess when you live in a society where ‘old age’ was 42...ppl would be looking rough. And these folks were lookin rough as hell.
The ‘Freedman’s bureau’ was supposed to protect & uplift Black ppl. Access to education & land. Was supposed to make sure Black ppl were treated fairly by the courts. #ReconstructionPBS
During the civil war, the Fed Gov came across a whole lot of land they were now responsible for. Hundreds of thousands of acres in the south. The Fed Gov gave newly enslaved ppl 3yrs to buy 40 acre plots. That turned into what? 40 acres & a mule. S/O to @SpikeLee 
White southerners got amnesty & Johnson had a soft idea about what Reconstruction was supposed to be. Andrew Johnson (who is NOT Andrew Jackson) was pretty much okay with White southerners using force against Black Americans again.
Andrew Johnson gave most white southerners amnesty, but the wealthy ones he despised (Johnson was a poor white) had to apologize to him personally. So the summer of 1865, Johnson met with rich White Southerners to..................hear them out.🙃
So after committing treason against the United States, Potus Andrew Johnson (himself a poor white) pardoned rich white southerners...and these folks were back in business like the Civil War never happened. Minor details in the world of whiteness😩
Omg and Johnson gave the land the Union had taken during the Civil War, back to confederate southerners! That same land that Black ppl were renting in order to one day own! That ‘40 Acres & a mule’ land. Wow. #ReconstructionPBS
So Black Americans working this land that the Freeman’s Bureau was in control of, were then forced into, racist/unfair property contracts with their former owners. Hello new slavery....Share cropping. Sharecropping lasted into the 1980’s. #ReconstructionPBS
Black ppl wrote to President Andrew Johnson. Their calls went un answered.
“The US had the opp 2 make ammends 4 centuries of enslavement. The US had the opp 2make it poss 4 the formerly enslaved ppl 2b economically indpndnt. The country failed. By not redistributing the land, it consigned most of them 2a dependence that remained 4 decades afterwards.”
Wow & now the humanizing of the ‘L*st C*use’ & the poor poor former slave owners who now had to wipe their own asses🙄. The politics behind, not the Civil War, but the North tripping over itself to bring it’s Southern white brethren back into the family....
Chile...The Black Codes...wow. And here comes ‘Social services’ taking Black children away from their families.
White families were literally pressing charges againt Black families for being “unemployed” and taking their children...to come work in their houses again. Wow
The KKK is created & coincides with The Black Codes. #ReconstructionPBS
The KKK took up where the Slave Patrols left off so...there’s that. Also, Frederick Douglas wondered, after 6months of Johnson’s Reconstruction, what new form slavery would take.
I won’t tweet no more 😂 but #ReconstructionPBS is really good. Anyway, Happy 4th & wear ya mask😷
Okay my last tweet. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved Black Men that ran away to fight for the North returned down south, after their victory ARMED WITH WEAPONS THEY HAD FROM THEIR TIME IN WAR AND THIS DOC IS GOOD. #ReconstructionPBS
