This next section provides a series of evidence concerning the newfound mobility of African Americans. Again, view the evidence and answer the questions in your notes.
View the following slide show that shows mobility for African Americans from 1860-1880. Answer the questions that follow:
MAP SKILL: What colors on the map indicate high amounts of African-American populations and what colors indicate few African Americans?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. The areas of orange and red indicate higher percentages of African Americans, while the areas in white or light yellow indicate none-low percentages of African Americans.
Where are the overwhelming amounts of African Americans living in 1860? Where are there none?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. African Americans are heavily concentrated in the Deep South. Notice where the map is shaded red. There are almost no African Americans in the West, and the majority of the middle of the country is in white.
By 1880, what has changed about the map?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. African Americans have clearly started to leave the South in places and move West, and there are almost no areas of the map shaded white by 1880. They also have filled in more of the entire South, such as the coastline of Florida.
What do these maps tell you about African-American freedom of movement during Reconstruction? Do they give a reason for that movement?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. These maps show African Americans spreading around the country. They cannot, however, tell you why they have moved. It would be a reasonable inference that ending slavery has provided more opportunities for movement.
The maps could not tell you about the reasons for the mobility. Some of it had to do with the change in laws of society, such as the passage of the Homestead Act. African Americans went West because the rest of the country was moving West. However, the unique shift from almost no African Americans in some places in 1860 to a growing population was related to emancipation.
Read this passage and answer the questions that follow:
Among the most resented of slavery’s regulations were the rule that no black could travel without a pass and the patrols that enforced the pass system. With emancipation, it seemed that half the South’s black population took to the roads. “Right off colored folks started on the move, “ a Texas slave later recalled. “They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they’d know what it was—like it was a place or a city.”…The ability to come and go as they pleased would long remain a source of pride for former slaves. “The Negroes are literally crazy about traveling,” wrote a white observer in 1877. “The railway officials are continually [asked] by them to run extra trains…on all sorts of occasions: holidays, picnics, Sunday-school celebrations, church dedications.”
Source: Foner, E. (1987). The meaning of freedom. Radical History Review. 39, p. 95
According to this passage, why was there a rise in African American travel? Answer in reference to the text.
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. During slavery, African American travel was greatly limited. With the restriction lifted, traveling from place-to-place was a sign of freedom and “a source of pride for former slaves.”
What evidence does the author provide to prove black enthusiasm for travel?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. He provides a rough (if slightly exaggerated) estimation on how many of the South’s black population took to the roads, and then he cites a former slave and a quote from a “white observer.”
How does the information in this passage relate to the maps you analyzed?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. It shows why many African Americans spread throughout the country. It was part of their new freedoms after emancipation.
Simple enthusiasm for travel does not explain all of the reasons for African-American movement. In this same essay, the author provides another reason for travel. Read this passage and answer in your notes.
Of all the motivations for black mobility, none was more poignant than the effort to reunite families separated during slavery. In September 1865, northern reporter John Dennett encountered a freedman who had walked more than six hundred miles from Georgia to North Carolina, searching for his wife and children from whom he had been separated by sale. Another freedman, writing from Texas, asked the aid of the Freedman’s Bureau in locating “my own dearest relatives,” providing a long list of sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles, and in-laws, none of whom he had seen since his slave in Virginia twenty-four years before…Emancipation allowed blacks to reaffirm and solidify their family connections, and most freedmen seized the opportunity with [eagerness]…By 1870, a large majority of blacks lived in two-parent households.
Source: Foner, E. (1987). The meaning of freedom. Radical History Review. 39, pp. 96-97.
What is the author’s argument in this paragraph to explain the reason for mobility?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. African Americans traveled throughout the country in order to reunite with families that were separated during slavery.
What evidence does the author provide to call these efforts “poignant,” which means emotionally moving?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. He cites two examples of one person who walked over 600 miles trying to find his wife and children and another person living in Texas wanting to find family that he hadn’t seen in 24 years when he was a slave in Virginia.
What were the consequences of emancipation on the African-American family? Could these gains be easily taken away?
Interactive popup. Assistance may be required. Even if efforts to reunite families did not succeed, emancipation strengthened the African-American family to the point where, by 1870, most of African-American families contained two parents. With slavery abolished, these gains could not be taken away by law.