A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South

Content Warning: This section discusses issues of racism and sexism.

During the post-Reconstruction period, African Americans were beginning to lose the freedom and rights they gained after emancipation. At the time of Cooper’s writing, new forms of oppression and disenfranchisement, particularly in the South, contested the liberation of Black people. Even though the text is embedded in the context of its time, it demonstrates that the struggle for racial equality is ongoing. Cooper stresses that the legacy of slavery still impacted American society and the position of Black people within it. She indicates that the South denied the laws of emancipation, noting that “Southern ideas and Southern ideals” had “domineered over the brain and sinew of [the] nation” (60). Racism persisted because Black people were enslaved and subjected to white authority for more than two centuries: “For two hundred and fifty years [the Southerner] trained to his hand a people whom he made absolutely his own, in body, mind, and sensibility” (60). Oppression of Black people became an integral part of Southern society, which resisted social change. Cooper notes that racial violence was still a threat for Black people, especially Black women, and criticizes the policies of segregation: “[T]his virulence breaks out most readily and commonly against colored persons in this country, is due of course to the fact that they are, generally speaking, weak and can be imposed upon with impunity” (55).