. According to Quarles, Since American institutions . . . lacked the strength or will to subdue slavery, other and more revolutionary techniques would begin to take hold of mens minds. Thus in the two decades prior to 1860 the notion of an armed confrontation mounted in intensity, however inapparent on the surface. On the eve of the Civil War, then, the idea of physical violence to free the slave was far from new. Since the time of Nat Turner this idea of a showdown by force of arms had been a recurring theme in Negro thought. Black fire-eaters did not go out of style with David Walker. (224)Reconstruction and Jim CrowIn the heat of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation announced that slaves throughout the South were free, that slavery had finally come to an end. The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution proclaimed that equal protection of the laws should be provided to all persons, regardless of race. Yes, the black race has finally received the freedom for which they longed. The rage would now subside, wouldnt it? The wrong had finally been righted, hadnt it? No. Throughout the Reconstruction period and the era of Jim Crow, black rage continued to express itself through the literature and rhetoric of an embittered, underprivileged black race, a race kept down far too long. No, equality and total freedom were not ensured nor afforded the black race. As a result, rage continued.And so did white oppression. Plessy vs. Ferguson declared that separate but equal was the new law of the land -- the new way of dealing with the Negro problem. The Ku Klux Klan governed the South. Ghettos contained blacks in northern cities. All was well in the mind of white America. All was peaceful in the good-ol U. S. of A. But was it? What about the rage of a race of people that were still oppressed and grieved? No, the rage had not been eased; it had grown in bitterness and guile. Blacks were risen from slavery, promised equ...
