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RE: Questions About John Brown
I've just finished reading online (mostly on Wikipedia, FWIW) about the Freedmen's Bureau, Dunning School of "thought", post Civil War Reconstruction, etc. From what I have read, it sounds as though most newly-freed black people were eager to learn to read and write, be employed and earn their own living, exercise their right to vote, find family members who they had been separated from during the war or from having been sold to different slave-holders, and they wanted to cement family relationships by having marriage ceremonies performed, which they had previously been denied. The (short-lived) Freedmen's Bureau tried to help them with some or all of these things.
But, then I read this: For William A. Dunning (from Plainfield, NJ), blacks "had no pride of race and no aspiration or ideals save to be like whites"...etc., etc., etc. Where did he get that idea? Why did he blame all, or most of the Reconstruction corruption and problems on black people? So Jim Crow laws could be implemented, basically negating much of the new freedom of black people?
Then, years later, along came people like LBJ and his Great Society and welfare (I know that deviates somewhat from the topic of this forum, but I'm trying to understand the progression of events in the race relations of this country). Did LBJ think he was doing a good thing, and was welfare originally intended to get less-fortunate people back on their feet and independent, or was it basically a write-off of people who were considered hopeless or incapable of living in American society without government assistance? Was it a way of winning votes in exchange for dependence on the government for basic necessities?
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