ality. In order to understand the reasons why blacks were treated so cruelly and socially unequal is to understand the perspective of whites in the era from the late 18th century to the late 19th century. "It (the south) must pettify the institution and its own reactions, must begin to boast at its own Great Heart. To have heard them talk, indeed, you would have thought the sole reason why some of the planters held to slavery was love and duty to the black man, the earnest, devoted will to not only get him into heaven but to also make him happy in this world. He was a child whom somebody had to look after." - W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South, pg. 85. Blacks were considered children. Social Equality cannot be achieved if inferiority is placed upon a race. Through the eyes of the Southerners, they believed that they were in fact saving the Black man from hell and his own savagery. Social and Racial Equality in the south was incredibly hard to obtain because blacks were considered childish, stupid, inferior, and hell-bound without the white man's help. On page 83 of The Mind of the South, W.J. Cash states, "The black man occupied the position of a domestic animal. without will or right of is own." And yes, the black man did play the role of a domestic animal, he was stripped of liberities, property, and will by the whites. The black man PLAYED the role of a domestic animal, but he was not a domestic animal. The institution of slavery brought the blacks to the lowest class possible, the slave class, they had no respect, no equality, no rights. It took the will of abolitionists, white and black, along with the power of war to end slavery, and another 100 years for blacks to gain their rights. "Are the Great Principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in teh Declaration of Independence, extended to us?... What to the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the y...
