Answer: “Birth of a Nation”—D. W. Griffith’s disgustingly racist yet titanically original 1915 feature—back to the fore. The movie, set mainly in a South Carolina town before and after the Civil War, depicts slavery in a halcyon light, presents blacks as good for little but subservient labor, and shows them, during Reconstruction, to have been goaded by the Radical Republicans into asserting an abusive dominion over Southern whites. It depicts freedmen as interested, above all, in intermarriage, indulging in legally sanctioned excess and vengeful violence mainly to coerce white women into sexual relations. It shows Southern whites forming the Ku Klux Klan to defend themselves against such abominations and to spur the “Aryan” cause overall. The movie asserts that the white-sheet-clad death squad served justice summarily and that, by denying blacks the right to vote and keeping them generally apart and subordinate, it restored order and civilization to the South.
“Birth of a Nation,” which runs more than three hours, was sold as a sensation and became one; it was shown at gala screenings, with expensive tickets. It was also the subject of protest by civil-rights organizations and critiques by clergymen and editorialists, and for good reason: “Birth of a Nation” proved horrifically effective at sparking violence against blacks in many cities. Given these circumstances, it’s hard to understand why Griffith’s film merits anything but a place in the dustbin of history, as an abomination worthy solely of autopsy in the study of social and aesthetic pathology.
In the plantations, male and female slaves were both responsible for all the planting, harvesting and cleaning of the fields under extremely harsh and inhumane conditions. The harvesting was carried out by broad curved machetes and afterwards the ripe sugar canes were loaded into carts and taken to the sugar cane mills erected in the plantation estates to be processed into sugar and its derivatives.
In the sugar cane mills, during the harvesting periods work was 24 hours none stop to meet up with supply deadlines as most of the machinery used were slow and inefficient.
In contrast to what happened in the plantation fields, the slave masters preferred female slaves working in the sugar cane mills. Theirs was a particularly hazardous and life-threatening responsibility as it involved pushing the sugar cane stalks into wooden and metal rollers to crush and extract the sugar cane juice and also operating the sugar cane broiler.
This preference was because:
- For economic reasons, though the slaves were bought, the human value of the slaves was never considered. The value of the end product was highly priced. Human slave life was easily replaced by the masters.
- And since working the sugar mills was a highly hazardous activity lives were frequently lost as the mill rollers were know to have crushed to death and maimed many slaves. In most parts of the world where African slaves were used, female slaves were sold at a cheaper value than their male counterparts. Therefore it stands to reason that the slaves masters would prefer the female slaves regarded as "cheaper replacements"
- Since work in the mills had to work 24 hours none stop, the environment had to be washed, swept frequently and kept clean to sustain a minimum level of cleaness and higiene. Female slaves were considered ideal for this as well.
Answer:
He made education reforms by creating publicly funded schools.
Explanation:
