Chapter 7, After Emancipation Summary

This chapter chronicles the lives of the slaves once they get their freedom. There was talk that the government would give them land, animals, and property, but that did not happen. The slaves left the slave owners' land and were instantly homeless and hungry. The joy of their newfound freedom was short-lived because of the desperation and hardships that they f endured once again. The freed slaves had to learn economic independence from the white man. Some returned to work on the plantations to work on a "share" system, wherein the farm owner would advance them room and board but take the payments from these items out of the farms' profits. Often, there was nothing left for the freed slaves so they were for forced into continuing to work as a sharecropper. One former slave remembers, "We did not...