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US History 11, Barriers to Equal Opportunity, PROGRESS CHECKPOINT

Last updated 10 months ago
7 questions
To interpret the following excerpt by Frederick Douglass you will need to apply your:
  • Historical knowledge of Reconstruction
  • Historical thinking skill of contextualization
  • Reading skill of evaluating explanations
Untitled Section 1
3
--THE JAILER--

The jailer in this scene represents a poor white Southerner who has served in the _______ Army. In contrast to the landowner, most people of his class did not own _______ . Frederick Douglass, an _______ renowned for his writings and speeches, was born into slavery. He wrote three autobiographies, and in the third, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, he addressed the plight of people like this jailer, maintaining that slaveholders regarded the “poor laboring white man” as little better than a slave, and encouraged competition between poor whites and enslaved Blacks.
Frederick Douglass on the “craftiness” of slaveholders

The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave and the black slave was this: the latter belonged to one slaveholder, and the former belonged to the slaveholders collectively. The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages...
1

Frederick Douglass believed that "the poor laboring white man" held a significantly higher social status than slaves.

1

What facts do you know about the people of the South that would support Douglass's perspective?

...The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves. They appealed to their pride, often denouncing emancipation as tending to place the white working man on an equality with negroes, and by this means they succeeded in drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave-master, they were already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the slave. The impression was cunningly made that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave's poverty and degradation.

From Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape From Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, p. 180 (published 1881)
1

According to Douglass how did slaveholders convince "poor laboring white men" to support the slavery?

1

Highlight the sentence that supports your answer from #4.

The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves. They appealed to their pride, often denouncing emancipation as tending to place the white working man on an equality with negroes, and by this means they succeeded in drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave-master, they were already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the slave. The impression was cunningly made that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave's poverty and degradation.
Untitled Section 2
Frederick Douglass on the “craftiness” of slaveholders
The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave and the black slave was this: the latter belonged to one slaveholder, and the former belonged to the slaveholders collectively. The white slave had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings, above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of laborers who worked without wages. The slaveholders blinded them to this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves as men--not against them as slaves. They appealed to their pride, often denouncing emancipation as tending to place the white working man on an equality with negroes, and by this means they succeeded in drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave-master, they were already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the slave. The impression was cunningly made that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white man from falling to the level of the slave's poverty and degradation.

From Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape From Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, p. 180 (published 1881)
1

This excerpt is from an autobiography that was published in 1881. Did it happen before, during or after the following event periods.

Before
During
After
Reconstruction
Enforcement of black codes
The passage of the 14th Amendment
Enforcement of Jim Crow
The Civil Right Movement
1

What might be the purpose of Douglass writing this in 1881?