The End of Reconstruction.

Artist Statement

As my visual, I decided to make a concept map. It shows that at the end of the reconstruction era, the blacks were still getting the same treatments. There were violence; beating, whipping, killing and there was so called “freedom”; with restrictions, segregation, and living. This visual has a meaning because it is telling the readers that even after the reconstruction, the former slaves became freedmen but yet they were still getting the same treatments. The quotes that I used are all from former slaves/freedmen after the reconstruction.

One element that the visual has that may not be clear for the reader is the branch in the middle that doesn’t connect to anything. That might not be clear because everything else is connected to one another, but that one isn’t. I decided to put that by itself in the middle because the phrase sums up the whole visual. It says, “The blacks were still under the whites,” which is what was happening. Even after the reconstruction, the blacks were suppose to be freedmen, but yet they were still under the whites and they had a hard time living on their own.

Another thing that might not be clear to the audience are the “branches”, the connections from one thing to another. The connections are pointing out the different points of the certain topic. For violence, it is connecting to three different points; whipping, beating and killing, because those are all a part of violence. For “freedom”, it’s connecting to restriction, living?, and segregation. Each of the points are connecting to two different quotes that I found from former slaves/freedmen that were spoken after the reconstruction.

My visual shows that after the reconstruction, the blacks were still getting the same treatments. They were treated poorly, they didn’t have their so called freedom, and they were still under the whites. Even though many believed that the reconstruction gave the former slaves freedom, they didn’t really fully get their freedom until about a hundred years later. That is why I think it matters as to the African American history as a whole.