By: Jessica Low THE SLOW DEATH OF ANTEBELLUM VALUES IN THE SOUTH.

By: Jessica Low

THE SLOW DEATH OF

ANTEBELLUM VALUES IN THE

SOUTH

THE SOUTH: BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR• Before the war, white people reigned supreme

all black people, who were slaves. Each and every black person were owned by someone who could kill, starve, or separate them (etc.) at will. It was up to the white man to supervise the work of the slave and to punish them when the work was not done to expectation. The slaves had no rights of their own and lived only to make white society easier to exist in.

• After the war was lost, and the slaves were free, the white Southerners were transient and confused. They were left with nothing and had to begin again. The black man was given the chance to move forward, though if he chose to remain in the same city, he could have been punished by his former owners.

• The next battle to be fought by man was the one within his self and outward in his society, in order to define his place in the newly created hierarchy.

THE LADDER• After the war, just as before, men were more

important in almost every aspect than were women. Adding another color of man and woman into the mix added in some confusion. Are black men better than white women? Are white women still better than black women? If we allow them to exist on the same plane, will that give them permission to mix… and then to breed? These are the questions that the leaders of each society had to ask while redefining itself after the forced inclusion of former slaves into their social structure.

• Of course, breeding, and therefore, socially mixing, were out of the question and the whole of the newly freed black society was segregated from the newly beaten and humbled white society, per government regulation. The ladder and Jim Crow were then created to combat any future problems that will stem from this new freedom of race.

• When the Civil War ended in 1865, the way of life for millions of whites and blacks in the Southern states had to end, and change dramatically. There were no more slaves to work on land for free.

• There were no support systems offered by the government to help those who had lost their farms, family, and communal support systems.

• Families who were once in control of an entire area, even of entire cities, were ground to dust by the northern army and left trampled, homeless and bleeding.

• Their money was worthless . The changes in supply and demand raised the prices of goods to unheard of levels

• Many former slave owners, or really anyone who came into contact with slaves daily before the war, grew scared of reprisals. Many abused slaves who were freed were actually then on a mission for revenge against the men who hurt them … who wouldn’t be?

• The slaves, on the other hand were sent out into the world as “equals” with out any preparation. They were expected to go out and complete with the white men for jobs when they were not educated and were not given the same chance for an education. They had the skill set, but are dogged by the negativity that their skin color detonates in white society.

• The black man as a former slave suffers from the same social stigmas as he did before his freedom was set. When black men and women were arrested, they were put back into slavery, of a sorts, that was prison.

JIM CROW TO THE RESCUE• The Jim Crow laws were state and

local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions that tended to be inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

Jim Crow refers to the racial hierarchy that defined American life through a set of laws and practices which operated primarily, but not exclusively, in southern and border states between 1877 and the mid-1960s. This hierarchy, with whites at the top and blacks at the bottom, a ladder, was supported by millions of everyday objects and images.

THE WOMEN-FOLK• Women, before and after the war, were expected to stay

out of politics and political discussions. Women were supposed to cook, sew, and either keep house, or supervise the keeping of the house.

• Women’s clothes were painful, with suffocating corsets and shoes that made the foot bleed everyday. This is the era that gave birth to the saying “beauty is pain.” Women were nostalgic for these times from before the war that this style made a comeback and influenced fashion deeply from then on.

• Before the war, the woman was only rich enough if she could afford a “mammy” to help her get dressed in the morning and to help her raise her children. A well-off woman never raised her own children. After the war, families would either retain their former slave “mammy” or hire a new black maid/nurse to be apart of the family as a status symbol.

• Before the war, status came from the reputation a man had within his community for his color and the way he runs his family. After the war, it became more about money.

RAPE AND THE BLACK MAN• Before and after the Civil War, white

women were told to stay far away from their black slaves who were understood to be less than human, animalistic, and are, therefore, too casual about sexual encounters, much like dogs out in the yard or horses in the pen. This idea stayed around long after the ending of the war.

• Since it was a man’s job to make sure that his woman was well behaved, the worst insult that could happen to a white man at this time is if his woman left him for a black man willingly.

• Therefore, the “excuse” cry of rape came up a lot as men would find their women involved with another man, or if discovered at the birth of a child, cries of rape increased to explain away such “deviant” behavior. Rape of a white woman by a black man was punishable by death.

THE WORLD OF SCOUT, JEM, AND ATTICUS FINCH

“TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD” BY HARPER LEE

• This story takes place in Southern Alabama in the early 1930’s. This state, as with all of the states, is readjusting to normal life after the most destructive war in U.S. history, the War Between the States. The older generation still running the town still remember that war as if it were yesterday. Still, to some characters, black people are still slaves and it should not matter if they have superior moral values, for example.