History 371Hon

Devine

Writing Assignment #2

Answer ONE of the two questions below.

1. Pretend you are an African American sharecropper in the late nineteenth century plantation south. In no more than two double-spaced pages, tell your readers why you are poor and why you expect to remain poor. In answering, draw on what you've learned from reading Mandle's chapters.

2. According to Mandle, black laborers in the South were not really “free” and the southern economy was not really “capitalist” – rather, it was a “plantation economy.” In no more than two double-spaced pages, summarize how Mandle supports this argument. What evidence does he introduce to back up these two points?