Blog # 7

Section A
1. During and before the Civil War the economy in the South was based on slavery therefore poor women were involved on it, women that lived under oppression of men and have no rights to decide their future. The small population of middle class women worked as mistresses and the elite women were the wives of the rich men; men that were the owners of the plantations whom the economy of the state depended on.
On the other hand, the North part of the country the economy relied more in factories and industrial companies therefore they were against slavery. The bottom class women were mainly working in factories, the middle class women were teachers and writers while elite women were able to vote and held their own properties. Elite women had more power in political issues in other words women in the North were more independent compared to women in the South.

2. The impact of the “New South” on women were devastated either because black people once they were freed they did not have where to go or work. Thus, some of them stayed in the plantations working for money in return of their labor, others looked for their families that were spread out. Black people were not allowed to assist to school therefore they struggled in society to find a better job. As a consequence, of this movement elite women needed to either pay for the domestic tasks or do it by themselves. The way the North was affected was that more women were competing for the same jobs as a result the overpopulation the wages of the factories brought down leading to an industrial capitalist economy.


Section B
1. The fundamental facts that motive to lynch Thomas along with his partnerships were the racism and the inability for white men to admit that white and black people now had the same rights. White men felt superior to black men therefore when Thomas decided to open a business called “Colored People’s Grocery Company” in a white neighborhood where a store owned by white men already existed. Lynching was used only to punish black men who dare to rape white women; this law was used as an excuse to terrorized black people who dare to compete with white men in business. Wealthy and prosperity was then banned to black people because white people believed that they should be subordinate to white men.

2. Ida B. Wells found that white men who where lynching black men were also raping black women. A fact that people could not denied therefore her conclusion that white men was using rape as an excuse to lynch black men. Wells also, challenged the community to judge white men for their acts as rapists against black women since they were too ease in hanging black males for the same circumstances.

3. White men believe that they were superior to black men or women. During slavery white men took this advantage to rape black women since they were their owners, also they abused black women to reproduced them and sale the child as a slave to get profit out of it when slavery was the main source of the economy. White men felt they had the rights to do whatever they want with their slaves since the paid an amount of money for them. It was absurd to think that black men and white women could be together as a couple and when a black male dared to be with a white woman was lynched, accused of raping white woman to save the reputation of white woman among their society. Wells saw the difference between the point of view of white men raping black women and black men raping white women –white men considered raping if a black male initiate a relationship with a white woman since white men considered black men no valuable and inferior to them. Unfortunately, this practice prevailed for many years in history because the people who had the power in this era agreed to