Zinn chapter 9: "Slavery without submission, emancipation without freedom"

In this article I think Zinn is trying to tell his readers that although the ending of slavery caused a lot of other reconstruction in America, it really became the only choice. Zinn also mentions that this decision is a "safe one" and in fact a "profitable one". As African Americans learned to come together and revolt against their owners and the country, whites became scared of what could happen. The article asks many different questions, all of which being good and succeed in sparking thoughts of readers. He asks one though which we have talked about a little bit in class, on page 130 Zinn asks "How can slavery be described?" and he continues to say that to some people who have never experienced it, being slavery, that it might be diffucult to describe but in 1932 historians saw slavery as "perhaps the Negro's necessary transition to civilization". I also found interesting in this article how a former slave described his "happiness" as an act to "keep down the trouble", in class we also talked about this, how whites thought the African Americans were alright with being slaves because in t.v. shows and such African Americans were always smiling and such. The article summarizes how the African Americans had to fight, sneak and die for freedom. Zinn also discusses the fact that even after the slaves were "free" they still had to depend on whites for jobs, food and shelter, because to be "free" African Americans had to own at least 250 acres of land. And even after they were fighting in the war, the blacks were payed three dollars less while they did the dirtiest and hardest jobs and whites would attack them when they were off duty in Northern cities. On page 144 Zinn quotes historian James McPhearson "without their help, the North could not have won the war as soon as it did, and perhaps it could not have won at all", later Judah Benjamin stated that "if slaves will make good soliders, our whole theory of slavery is wrong". In my opinion as African Amerians became more intrigrated into the American society whites started to realize, they were just as competent and able to do what the whites had. But why after blacks had fought in the war and proved they were capable of holding their own didnt they earn respect from whites? Could some whites have wanted to respect the blacks but instead took the path of least resistance? Soon amendments were passed finally stating that African Americans were citizens of the United States. Of course there was still discrimination and unfair treatment of African Americans, on page 148 of Zinns article, he talks about how seventy thousand African Americna children were going to school in 1876 whereas none had before. That was a big step, long time overdue but unfortunatly with every step forward we were still many back. Segregation became widely known. I liked this article because it gave a quick yet detailed description of all that the African Americans had to go through to be accepted by whites. I still think it is sad that people who worked harder than any plantation owner could be treated so poorly in a country who advertised the idea of dreams and freedom.