Richard Wright 1)Describe the picture of the American South drawn up by Richard Wright
The American South is agriculturally a fertile part with pine and palm trees, with rolling hills and swampy delta. In spring, every where it is green. The trees such as Oak, Elm, Willow, Aspen, Sycamore, Dogwood, Cedar, Walnut, Ash and Hickory get so thick that they almost cover the land, forming a cover from Sun. In summer the scent of Magnolia trees pervades the air all around. Days are slumberous and skies full with fast passing clouds. Butterflies, wasps and birds produce their own music. Nights come with the covering of starry sky with the sounds of frogs and crickets. In autumn the dry leaves of trees flutter all around getting entangled in the grass. It is the cotton peaking season in that part.
2) How did the new kind of bondage called sharecropping happen in America?
Slavery was a bondage in which the negroes worked for white landlords day and night. After the end of slavery after 1865 these coloured people did not have anywhere to go and anything to do except working on farms. So they turned to their old masters to beg for the work. The old masters offered them a new deal which was called SHARECROPPING. It was a new bondage in which the coloured people were given some share of the income after cutting out all the money that was invested. When the crop failed and the black tried to run away to avoid the debt, he was dragged back by the white police and again made to work on the farm. Thus sharecropping was a new kind of bondage, a trick played upon by whites on blacks to keep them on their farms.
3) How did the most of the African-American men live after abandoning the plantations they were born into?
During the first decade of the 20th century more than one and three quarter million of African-American men abandoned the plantations they were born into and roamed the states of the South America. For more than two hundred and fifty years they were in bondage, now as they wanted to feel the freedom, most of them trampled from place to place just for the sake of it. They labored, in sawmills, in the turpentine camps, on the road jobs etc. Some travelled to North America to try their luck.
4) Why did the African-American women fare better than their men in the early days of freedom?
Due to working under slavery the African-American men did possess no feelings of family, home, community, race, church or progress. But the women knew these things better. Because of that, their authority was supreme in the families. They had worked at the houses of the white owners, and so they had seen the ways of living from close. They had learned manners and the works such as cooking, sewing and nursing. They were called as Mammies at the big houses. Even after the end of slavery most of the women remained with their white masters and lived their life in the cabins tending their children. Thus African-American women enjoyed some status which was denied to their male counterparts thus their relationship with the world was more stable the men in the early days of freedom. Answer in about 300 words.
1. Enumerate the trials and tribulation the African-Americans had to face according to Richard Wright. The African-Americans were kept in bondage/slavery for more than two hundred and fifty years in America. During this period these people had to face many trials and tribulations which Richard Wright enumerates as follows. Near about all the African-Americans tilled the land at the white landlords along with their wives and children. They worked on tobacco, cane, rice, and Cotton plantations. All the year round they worked on farms day and night. No artist, radio, movies, newspaper or church ever painted their suffering. Nobody ever bothered about their condition. They were considered as sub-human. Above them there were three classes of men: A) Bosses of the building B) Lords of the land and C) the landless poor whites. During slavery African-Americans were suppressed and trampled upon ( to get crushed under the feet) so much that they went in a kind of trauma (shock), a kind of numbness. Richard Wright says, It will take many years to come out of it, and still some more years to utter how it hurt. After freedom from slavery after 1865, the coloured people did not have anywhere to go and anything to do except working on farms. So they turned to their old masters to beg for the work. The old masters offered them a new deal which was called SHARECROPPING. It was a new bondage in which the coloured people were given some share of the income after cutting out all the money that was invested. When the crop failed and the black tried to run away to avoid the debt, he was dragged back by the white police and again made to work on the farm. Thus sharecropping was a new kind of bondage, a trick played by whites to keep the blacks in servitude (slavery). During the first decade of the 20th century most of the African-Americans left the plantations they were born into and roamed the states of the South America, just for the sake of it. It was their try to taste the freedom. They laboured in sawmills, in the tupentine camps, on the road jobs etc. Some travelled to North America to try their luck. The whites predicted (to foretell) that, these blacks would perish (to end) in a competitive world. The condition of black women was better than their male counterparts. Due to working under slavery the African-American men did possess no feelings of family, home, community, race, church or progress. But the women knew these things better. Because of that, their authority was supreme in the families. They had worked at the houses of the white owners, and so they had seen the ways of living from close. They had learned manners and the works such as cooking, sewing and nursing. They were called as Mammies at the big houses. Even after the end of slavery most of the women remained with their white masters and lived their life in the cabins tending their children. Thus African-American women enjoyed some status which was denied to their male. The economical and political power of the South America was centered in the hands of whites. They were the businessmen, industrialists and the politicians. Blacks at the most could set up barber shops, rooming houses, burial societies etc. Most of the African-Americans worked as Sharecroppers. It was a system in which blacks signed oral contracts with the white landlords to work on their farms. In this system they could get one half of the harvest, after all the debts were paid. Once the contract was made they were legally bound to work for the whole year. During the year if the crop failed and the debts mounted, Blacks sometimes used to run away. But then the white policemen used to drag them back to the farm to complete the contract. Their lives were harrowed more by the cotton farming. As it was a cash crop they had to do back-breaking work day and night. They were forbidden (prohibited/ asked not to do something) to plant any vegetable, because that way the land under cotton used to go waste. Here Richard Wright says that, if there had been no cotton farms their lives would not have been so harsh. Cotton ruined (destroyed) their lives.
