Planters and Sharecroppers essays

Planters and Sharecroppers essays The two works, Lanterns on the Levee: the Recollections of Planter's Son by William A. Percy and All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw by Theodore Rosengarten are very representative of the mind of the South during the era in which they were written. Though they are simply the stories of two men the works have often been used as a reasonable comparison between the lives of the social elite whites in the rural south and the lives of the financially and socially oppressed blacks. Although it is impossible to create a complete picture of the lives of all people living within the conditions of the antebellum south, through the stories of just two men, the messages of these two works express some hints of the ideals of each class represented. Additionally, within these two works can be found reasons for individual successes of these two men and by default those who shared their respective statuses. Within the text of these two works there are many points of comparison that leave the reader with both questions and answers to some of the most perplexing questions of the antebellum era. The comparison, between these two works and specifically between these two men gives many people, reared within today's politically correct educational system, a foundation for the reality of oppression after emancipation. The ways in which some people were kept down while others were elevated is often a fascination of historians and even novice readers interested in the era. Not the least of which, is the striking impression that these two groups lived in completely separate worlds interwoven only The most foundational expressions of the answers to the reasons for the evaluation of both Percy and Shaw as the ideal representatives of their class can be summated in a few social distinctions. The one distinction that rises to the top, is clearly the distinction of economic succ...