United States History Student Edition

A

B

A Freedmen’s Bureau Superintendent While the Freedmen’s Bureau offered support to formerly enslaved African Americans, many white people in the Southern states bitterly resented the whole idea of Reconstruction and its goal of full citizenship for African Americans. This letter describing race relations in Tennessee was sent from a Freedmen’s Bureau superintendent to his superior officer. PRIMARY SOURCE: LETTER “ Chattanoog Tenn. Oct 6th 1865 [Captain]– I have the honor to forward to you the following information which I recd. to day from Gen’l: Spears of Pikeville Bledsoe County Tenn.– He states that the pooer class of whites in Sequache Vally are very bitter toward the freedmen and punish them severely– They have ordered all of the Black’s to leave the Valley– Their reason for so doing is, because the orriginal owners of the slaves are leasing them lands and the white laboring class is bitterly opposed to it. The men enter the houses of the freedmen and rob them of their money and clothing. The genl states that protection will have to be granted to the freedmen in some shape. He also states that the home-guards there are the worst enemies the freedmen have. . . . Very Respectfully Your [Obedient Servant] N. B. Lucas ” — letter from Captain N. B. Lucas to Captain W. T. Clark, October 6, 1865 EXAMINE THE SOURCE 1. Identifying What does the superintendent say is happening to the freed people in his area? 2. Analyzing How does the primary source illustrate the challenges faced by formerly enslaved African Americans during Reconstruction?

Recalling the Ku Klux Klan In the 1930s, the federal government undertook a massive project in which some 2,300 formerly enslaved African Americans were interviewed, recorded, and photographed. The resulting 17-volume work entitled Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews With Former Slaves provides first-person accounts of slavery. Carrie Bradley Logan Bennet was born into slavery on a farm in rural Mississippi. Her mother did housework while her father was forced to work as a blacksmith. She gave her interview when she was 79 years old and commented, “I never do feel good. I don wore out. I worked in the field all my life.” PRIMARY SOURCE: INTERVIEW “ I was scared to death of the Ku Klux Klan. They come to our house one night and I took my little brother and we crawled under the house and got up in the fireplace. It was big enough fer us to sit. We went to sleep. We crawled out next day. We seen ‘em coming, run behind the house and crawled under there. They knocked about there a pretty good while. We told the folks about it. I don’t know where they could er been. I forgot it been so long. I was ‘fraider of the Ku Klux Klan den I ever been ‘bout snakes. No snakes ‘bout our house. Too many of us. ” — from Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews With Former Slaves EXAMINE THE SOURCE 1. Identifying Where did Bennet hide from the Ku Klux Klan? 2. Analyzing Points of View Describe how Bennet felt about the Ku Klux Klan. What do

her views reveal about life for African Americans during Reconstruction?

(l)Capt N. B. Lucas to Capt W. T. Clark, 6 Oct. 1865, L-54 1865, Registered Letters Received, series 3379, TN Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives. In Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Series 3: Vol. 1. Land and Labor, 1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017; (r) Federal Writer’s Project. Works Progress Administration. “Carrie Bradley Logan Bennet.” Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. Vol II, Arkansas Narratives, Pt. 1. Sponsored by the Library of Congress. Washington, 1941.

492