The second danger is for the people of Alabama

aluminium faces dickens problems regarding race relations. One is tiring of the feed just as the blonde female fry in the out of date joke, who swims half-way across a lake, declares she is too tired to make it all in all the way, and then swims rearwards to the side she started on. If the residents of aluminum grow tired of increaseing, they too, magnate aroundday end up back where they started. The wear upon of multiplications, then, would be wasted.The second danger is for the mint of atomic number 13 to believe that enough progress has been made. It is easy to think of unrivalleds own generation as the most advanced in all of time. Yet, a look back at history shows that previous generations matt-up the same way. An examination of the attitudes and actions of the progressives in the sometime(prenominal) sheds some light on how removed Alabama has come and how far it business leader still need to go.Many citizenry right away portray buckle down masters as wick ed, violent men, who beat their slaves constantly and drop their needs. This is not a completely faultless picture. Indeed, former Alabama slave Alice Gastoni (Gaston, 1941, p. 1) in a 1941 interview with Robert Sonkin the following alone the smock folks that know me, they treats me nice. And if I want anything, Ill ask for it. I was taught in that a way by my old master. Dont steal, dont lie, and if you want anything, ask for it. Be fairish in what you get. That was what I was raised up with. And Im that a way today.Another former slave, Isom Moseley akin(predicate)ly said that hed achievemented for, cogency good albumin folks. (Moseley, 1941) He remembered the white people having shoes for the children and the elderly. Similarly, former slave Joe MacDonald re grouseed that his master had made sure he was educated, so that he would be hardened well by other white people, once the master and his wife had died and deceased to heaven. (MacDonald, 1940)One slave possessor acquireed a child by a abusive woman. or else of denying his paternity, mob T. Rapiers father acknowledged him and hired a mysterious tutor to educate him in secret, because Alabama law, at the time, did not allow blacks to be educated.ii Rapier elected to the forty-third copulation in 1873 as a republican.Yet, in some subdivisions of the domain, slaves were treated genuinely badly particularly in the earlier years. In 1824, slaves in Montgomery outnumbered whites. some half of Alabamas heads of plate were slave owners.As the number of slaves in Alabama increased, so did per capita wealth. Indeed, in 1930, per capita wealth was $700, which was unusual by any other part of the country.1 These factors lead many whites to dread black insurrection. If Alabama blacks rose up against whites, the outnumbered whites might not be able to run off them.Therefore, many feared for their lives. Others feared losing their fortunes. If blacks were completed, once great southerners wo uld abide to compete with industrialized northerner families in the American economy. It would be extremely hard for them to compete. iiiWhite fear lead to increased oppression. While, for a time, on that point were free blacks in Alabama, the government tail them out in 1839. An article from The brisk-Yorker in 1839 declares, By a law of the make it session of the Alabama legislature, all free persons of color who remain in the state after the 1st of August undermentioned are to be enslaved.ivIf a similar ruling were made today, the newspaper editors would call for public outrage. In 1839, the note is obviously followed by a warning most yellow fever in New Orleans. Clearly, neither the government, nor the media thought of blacks as equals.Yet, dapple the Alabama legislature tried to discharge the state of free blacks, it also ruled, in 1852, that owners must properly clothe their slaves. check to Mary Jenkins Schwartz, however, the law was not oblige and frequently bro ken.v Jenkins states that because owners would not follow the law, slaves who had children had a difficult time keeping their children warm. Indeed, she says, on one Alabama grove, mothers would cut holes in gunny sacks to clothe their sons and daughters.viSlaves were treated on many orchards as animals. Jenkins reports that many slept on hay. Children were given blankets of inferior quality and pass judgment to share with one another. Children who did not work in the fields on one plantation, were not given food allowances.Therefore their parents would attain to catch animals like rabbits and raccoons to feed them. Indeed, says Jenkins, some children would look forward to working in the fields because they would be able to take a leak food for themselves to stop their hunger.viiThe fact that plantation owners thought of slaves just as people think of animals is also evinced by a number of documents from Alabama in the 1800s. For instance, in 1852, a Parks Landing plantation ow ner offered a reward of cubic decimetre dollars for the return of his runaway slave, Stephen. It reads like a lost pet poster. The plantation owner describes his slave as, A fine feel negro who is between twenty-five and thirty years of age, about six-feet senior high school, copper-colored, with a high fore-head. viii1 Jenkins reports that slave owners would use this to tempt slaves into displace their children to work in the fields. Those who did would receive, one tog apiece. One boy, who worked carrying water for workers, earned a shirt, two pairs of pantaloons and shoes.i Alice Gaston. Interview with Alice Gaston, Gees Bend, Alabama, Voices of Slavery. library of Congress. Washington, D.C. 1941. ii Eugene Feldman. James T. Rapier, Negro Congressman from Alabama, The Phylon Quarterly. Vol 19. No. 3 1958. iii Clayton W. Williams Early Ante-Bellum Montgomery A Black-Belt Constituency, The journal of Southern History, Vol. 7, No. 4. Nov. 1941. iv Free Negroes in Alabama, Th e New Yorker. Sep. 14, 1839 7 26. P. 411v Mary Jenkins Scwartz. natural in Bondage Growing up Enslaved in the Antebellum South. (Harvard Harvard University Press, 2000). viii Levi Parks. Poster pass fifty dollars reward for the capture of a runaway slave Stephen, American Memory. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C. 1852.