the souls of black folk

Amber James


Period 2

Chapter of 7 SOULS OF BLACK FOLK

In the beginning of Chapter 7 they were talking about how not only did the whites treat blacks wrong they also did the same to the Indians. They took things and land from people who already had it and was already there. The whites effectively abused their power. So they took land and other things that Indians owned from them and they took the lives and hope from blacks.

Chapter 7 is basically describing changes that have occurred in the black belt since the civil war. The black belt was actually a region of the southeastern United States. In this chapter they talked about the population and it seemed to be that there were more blacks than whites in this region and at one point of time the whites were dominant over the blacks. It seemed as if everyone was suffering economic wise. Many of the recent plantation owners who stayed were poor and suffering also. So now since they didn’t have slaves to work on their plantations anymore times got harder and now they tried to get any and everyone to work for very little amounts of money and also places to stay were very high in rent. Even little white girls were hoeing the crops.


A lot changed in the south during this time. Blacks weren’t exactly treated like equal “citizens” but life was much better than before. They actually enjoyed some of their days and some of them were wealthier than the whites that looked down on them. The book talks about how only straggling bits belong to the family, and the rest to Jews and Negroes. They were talking about a certain plantation owner who hated blacks and even claimed to kill plenty of them and its really ironic how the people that he hated the most ended up with more of his property than his own family. This chapter is very believable and realistic to me. I really believed that things like this have actually happened. Even now blacks aren’t fully excepted by some whites so its very believable that they were hardly excepted back then .