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It's important to remember that recently freed blacks [Black people with arms in the air]

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weren't just passive victims they resisted oppression and empowered

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themselves every tiny chance they got around 2,000 African Americans held [African appears appear outside congress]

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public office during Reconstruction someone from cotton-picking the policy

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making in a matter of years so pretty impressive however many whites in the

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North and South weren't down with the whole progress thing so once

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reconstruction was over they went on a whiny rant about the brutal black [Man celebrating]

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dictatorship run by the illiterate ignorant lustful african-americans we

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have a fake single-tier in a sappy slow clap for that performance the whites had [Tear falls from girls face]

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blown things way out of proportion to serve their own needs South Carolina

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where blacks comprised sixty percent of the population was the only state in

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which blacks even had a majority in the state legislature though white folks [Man freezing]

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just needed a chill some of the newly freed men went way high up in government

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fourteen black men were elected to the House of Representatives and two even

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served in the Senate Hiram revels and Blanche k Bruce the black leadership

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doesn't just mean politics religion played a big role in the black community [Religious group singing]

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both before and after the conversion of slaves to Christianity ministers

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preachers and others were often the heads of communities they meant with

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Union generals that went south organizing appeals to the government and [Man appears with union generals]

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even being elected to office some African Americans were able to get an

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education or learn a craft even while they were slaves earning a little bit of [Man writing and woman holding wooden toys]

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their own money on the side well after the war they were viewed as the big men

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on campus the same went for the 250,000 free blacks in the south who lived in

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cities like New Orleans or Charleston in fact about half of the 22 black men in

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Congress had been freed before the Civil War not all free blacks had seen [Men staring into each other]

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eye-to-eye when it came to slave some saved money to free their loved ones

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from slavery while some actually owned their own slaves seriously yeah and

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here's another slice of complication to the family reunion level awkward fest [Man with hot dog and cola]

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many of the black men who served as soldiers had to evict freed slaves from

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plantation so the land could be returned to the former white owners

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it went like this you're free a now get off the land of your former captors yeah [Man chases woman with baseball bat]

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they were our captors to know we don't like giving them their land back but

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that's the law so what can we do yeah sometimes life sucks

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