Reconstruction Video Reax Post

 

My View The Reconstruction Era Video

During our Talking About Freedom class we watched a video called Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. After listening to the video, I took notes on what I learned and how I reacted to what was going on at the time. 

In the beginning of the video, it talked about how a 21 year old man in 2015 shot up a church group filled with black people. This was ruled out as a hate crime. I was surprised by this because it was only 11 years ago when this happened which shows how racism is still present in today's society. 

Civil War

Moving into the Reconstruction Era in the video, it talks about the day Robert E Lee surrenders to U.S.S. Grant in Virginia on April 9, 1865. This began the early days of freedom for black people. At the start, former slaves were separated from slavery and started putting up flyers in hopes to reunite with there families. This made me realize that the consequences of slavery still effect there lives even after they are free.  

Freed Man’s Bureau

We especially see the effects that slavery left behind when talks about black people owning land came into play.

During this time, many black people did not have homes because they lived on the property of their slave owner. So many former slaves needed to find houses. This is when the Freed Man's Bureau was developed. This stated that former slaves needed to their old slave owner to grant them permission to own land. I was confused by this because it does not make sense to me on why they would need permission when they are not owned by a slave holder anymore. If they are free, why should they still need to get the "ok" from a white man to own property? 

Overall Reaction

Watching this video showed me that freedom did not mean equality for Black Americans after the Civil War. Even after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, formerly enslaved people were left to rebuild their lives with very little. Families were torn apart and searching for one another, and many had no homes or land of their own. What stood out to me most was that even with the Freedmen’s Bureau, they still had to rely on white landowners to be able to own property. If they were truly free, they should not have needed anyone’s approval.

The video opened with the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, and I think it connects to everything that followed. The struggles of Reconstruction did not end in the 1800s. The racism that limited freedom then is still present today, only 11 years after that attack. This video taught me that to understand where we are now, we have to understand how unfinished the promise of freedom was in 1865.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was partially used to create this blog post. After I wrote most of my thoughts down on what I thought of the video, I asked Claude AI to write a conclusion for my blog post. I then added pictures to my blog before posting it.