Interview with Olga Kalinina by Karina Kalinina:

Revealing the Hidden Secrets of the Past

Topic: Compare/contrast life of African Americans to life of the white population of the South

Question:

1. How did the lives of enslaved African Americans differ from the lives led by their masters?

Answer:

1. Every aspect of a typical life, such as access to education, varied meals, clothing, and forms of entertainment, differed greatly in the daily lives led by the two races.

Question:

2. How did the lives of enslaved African Americans prove to be similar to the lives led by their masters?

Answer:

2. Each race had a specific culture and some form of entertainment, such as dancing, singing, acting, and so on and so forth.

Question:

3. How did the attitudes of whites toward African Americans differ from the North to the South?

Answer:

3. Whites living in the North regarded African Americans as humans and thus outlawed slavery, yet Caucasians of the South viewed blacks as their property, which should be kept enslaved.

Question:

4. What role did African Americans serve during the Civil War?

Answer:

4. African Americans served an honorable role in the Civil War by accompanying the Union troops in the battle against the Confederates in order to gain their individual freedom and liberty for their brethren.

Question:

5. How did the general African American view of President Lincoln differ with the view of the president by white supremacists?

Answer:

5. African Americans considered President Lincoln to be “the emancipator” and an impartial, honorable man. White supremacists, however, believed Lincoln was a menacing and unjust abolitionist centered more on issues concerning blacks, rather than the nation’s troubles.

Question:

6. What forms of segregation did African Americans experience?

Answer:

6. African Americans were mainly segregated from whites at hotels, restaurants, cinemas, theaters, certain shops, and other public locations. Additionally, black individuals were mandated by law to have used separate drinking fountains and restrooms, to have been divided into separate regiments in the military, etc.

Question:

7. How did the lifestyles of African Americans revolutionize after the Civil War?

Answer:

7. African Americans finally gained their independence after the Civil War, yet most of them weren’t accustomed to this new sensation of liberty and were deprived of the food, shelter, and clothing typically received from their masters. This caused colossal swarms of blacks to seek vocations as sharecroppers on white-owned land without the landowners being able to claim the free blacks as their slaves.

Question:

8. How were African Americans and Caucasians affected by the Great Depression?

Answer:

8. Unemployment rates increased among both races, yet African Americans confronted greater job discrimination than whites and thus suffered on a much greater scale.

Question:

9. How did the founding of black schools and colleges after the Civil War affect the rural black population?

Answer:

9. These new schools and colleges acted as gateways into the bright future of education for the illiterate former slaves, thus increasing the blacks’ narrow view of the world into a vaster expanse.

Question:

10. How were enslaved African Americans treated by their masters?

Answer:

10. Enslaved African Americans were often severely, sometimes fatally, punished by their masters, usually by receiving a harsh whipping, even for the committing of minor errors or simply based on the owner’s suspicions. Also, slaves endured unfit conditions for humans, for they were sustained by meager provisions and sold away from their families upon the slaveholder’s wish.

Topic: Life during the Great Depression

Question:

11. What types of responsibilities did men, women, and children face during the Great Depression?

Answer:

11. The women of the Great Depression were responsible for completing household avocations, such as cooking, cleaning, and raising the children, the men remained responsible for earning the money, and the children typically received vocations or stayed with their siblings while their mother worked.

Question:

12. Why was it more difficult to support your family if you were of the African American race?

            Answer:

12. Job discrimination due to race was common during the Great Depression, thus causing it to be more difficult for an African American to receive a respectable vocation or any vocation at all.

Question:

13. Why did multiple families sharecrop during the 1930’s?

                   Answer:

13. Most African Americans and numerous whites couldn’t afford to purchase their own land and had no money to pay as rent due to the Great Depression of the 1930’s. As a result, some landowners viewed opportunity in the having of sharecroppers to farm their land. At the end of the harvest, the worker would pay rent in cash or an immense portion of their crops.

Question:

14. What was the significance of the Dust Bowl?

Answer:

14. The Dust Bowl, an extremely severe drought, drove multiple unfortunate farmers off their lands and to California in hopes of locating work, which was tremendously difficult to receive during the Great Depression.

Question:

15. What was the importance of “Black Thursday”?

Answer:

15. “Black Thursday” proved to be of significance due to this particular day marking the commence of an economic disaster by the name of the Great Depression due to the stock market crash, which brought the nation’s financial system to a bloody end and threw the country into pure turmoil.