Summary Of Margaret Walker's Jubilee

Jubilee is a book written by Margaret Walker based on the life of her great, great grandmother, Elvira Dutton, known in the book as Vyry. It was at a time when slavery was still in the United States. Some of the things that happened in the book also happened in history, like the American Civil War, the emancipation of slaves by Abraham Lincoln, and the emergence of the infamous KKK or Ku Klux Klan. The first part of the story told about Vyry’s struggle during her time as a slave. This story kept going on until the bloodiest war in the history of the United States, the Civil War broke out, which will end with the victory of the North, the death of both her master and his wife and the emancipation of slavery. During the Reconstruction Era, the …show more content…
Before the war, the South was a less modern people whose mindsets were less open and considered themselves as noble gentlemen and more civilized than the North, who they considered to be more rude and less mannered. They were more arrogant, with aristocratic views on the world and still had slaves to do their works even though it was obvious that slavery was an inhumane act. They believed in white superiority, this belief that would later gave birth to the fanatical Ku Klux Klan, and were people with high nationalism bordering to zealotry, which was shown when many people volunteered for the army during the Civil War and donated moneys and supplies for the nation’s cause. After they lost the war, they became broken and suffered because all their belongings were taken from them, and so released their pent-up frustration on the free blacks. Before the war, the blacks were mostly slaves whose social status was lower than even the poor white people and weren’t even considered as human beings by the South people, but a property. During the war, they took a more active role. The blacks in the North volunteered to fight in the army, while in the South they started to work at factories to make weapons, etc. After the war, they were finally freed and claimed their right as a human being and not a property. Even though they were still poor, they were free although still poorly educated and socially hated by the South …show more content…
The political changes during the Ante-Bellum Year in the life of Vyry were that slaves were treated as things and had no right to vote, and after the Civil War will be changed by the emancipation of slaves. The economical changes during Ante-Bellum Year were that the main economic income came from the plantation and the slaves which, after the war, can’t be maintained and brought chaos to the South’s economy. The blacks got the lands and used them to grow plants of their own. The social changes during the Ante-Bellum Year were that the South was controlled by the rich, arrogant plantation owners, who held a significant amount of influence in the government. Later after the war, they were mostly killed or broken, from a rich, well-influenced man to a poor and hated man. The blacks’ social status changed from being slaves and properties to free men, free to live their own