Part 1 : Assignment 1 - Directions Part 1: Rhetorical Context for “Letter to My Nephew”

by James Baldwin
1. James Baldwin Biographical Information
- Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his
many works.
- known for his essays on the black experience in America.
- Writer and playwright James Baldwin was born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York.
One of the 20th century's greatest writers
2. Emancipation Proclamation
- Written by Abraham Lincoln ( White president )
- The Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, it was an important turning
point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human
freedom.
- Issued after the Union victory at Antietam, the Emancipation Proclamation had both
moral and strategic implications for the ongoing Civil War.
3. Jim Crow
- codified system of racial apartheid that dominated the American South for three quarters
of a century beginning in the 1890s.
- laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks,
libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and
"Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.
4. Civil Rights Movement
- civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the
1950s and 1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States.
- Little rock nine, rosa parks, civil rights act of 1957
- World war 2 and civil rights
5. Forced Integration in the South
- Brown vs board of education
- The re integration of either public or education → trying to mix the blacks and whites
- Trying to reconstruct an era that was already falling apart
6. Harlem in the 1920s-60s
- Wealthier blacks continued to purchase land in Harlem, and by 1920, a significant
portion of the neighborhood was owned by blacks. By the late 1960s, 60% of the
businesses in Harlem responding to surveys reported ownership by blacks, and an
overwhelming fraction of new businesses were black owned after that time.
 Essay 3 Freewrite - Part 1: American History and the Dream

Directions:​ Coates argues the violence and criminality of American History created the Dream
that so many Americans hold on to. ​Select 3 of the historical terms below​ to further research
and understand. For each term, define it and provide 5 facts about that term.
Lynch Mobs or Lynch Law
Racial Profiling Laws or Stop and Frisk
1. The Transatlantic Slave Trade​ : A journey that transported enslaved Africans across
the Atlantic Ocean into the Americas.
- Forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the
sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- It was the second of three stages of the so-called triangular trade in which arms, textiles,
and wine were shipped from Europe to Africa, slaves from Africa to the Americas, and
sugar and coffee from the Americas to Europe.
- The largest numbers of slaves were taken to the Americas during the 18th century, when,
according to historians’ estimates, nearly three-fifths of the total volume of the
transatlantic slave trade took place. ( Because of high demands in sugar & tobacco
plantations. )
- Most historians believe that the slave trade had devastating effects in Africa. Economic
incentives for warlords and tribes to engage in the slave trade promoted ​an atmosphere
of lawlessness and violence.
- Although a good portion of slaves were brought as slaves from tribes that already
considered them tribes, Portuguese started going deeper into Africa and taking people by
force when the demands started to get high.
2. The Black Codes​ : They were a set of restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom
african americans “received” after the civil war.
- Under black codes, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts; if they
refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor ( Happened under
Andrew Jackson & Republican Party )
- A Union victory would mean no less than revolution in the South, where the “peculiar
institution” of slavery had dominated economic, political and social life in the antebellum
(occurring or existing before a particular war, especially the American Civil War ) years.
- Abraham Lincoln proposed less suffrage for African Americans as the war drew to a
close -- days later Lincoln was assassinated.
- * Under his ( Jackson ) Reconstruction policies, which began in May 1865, the former
Confederate states were required to uphold the abolition of slavery (made official by the
13th Amendment​ to the ​U.S. Constitution​), swear loyalty to the Union and pay off their
war debt. Beyond those limitations, the states and their ruling class—traditionally
 dominated by white planters—were given a relatively free hand in rebuilding their own
governments.
- Throughout the Union war Jackson being from Tennessee remained very loyal, he was a
firm supporter of states’ rights and believed the federal government had no say in issues
such as voting requirements at the state level.
3. Sharecropping​ : The system in which families rent a small plot of land from a
landowner, in exchange for a portion of the crops they grew.
- With the southern economy in disarray after the abolition of slavery and the devastation
of the Civil War, conflict arose during the Reconstruction era between many white
landowners attempting to reestablish a labor force and freed blacks seeking economic
independence and autonomy.
- January 1865 General ​William T Sherman ​issued that some land be given to families in
order to start the reconstruction of a broken era after the war, Many were given 40 acres
of land and a mule. However in the summer of 1865 Andrew jackson ordered that all this
land be given back to its original owners.
- Despite “giving” African Americans the rights of citizens, the federal government (and
the Republican-controlled state governments formed during this phase of Reconstruction)
took little concrete action to help freed blacks in the quest to own their own land.
- Since many “former” slaves didn't receive help from the government it made things
harder if they wanted to own land and progress in the US during this time.
- The sharecropping system also locked much of the South into a reliance on cotton—just
at the time when the price for cotton was plunging.