Chapter 13, Looking Things Over (c. 16) Summary and Analysis

This is the final normal chapter of the autobiography. She addresses racial issues but not because it is a strong personal interest. Rather, she does this only because it comes up. She is glad that she lives decades and even a century after the end of slavery. In earlier chapters, she discussed the reality that the bulk of Africans who were sold into slavery were captured and sold off by other Africans. Here, the difference was far from based on skin color. Tribal differences were found other ways, the more subtle distinctions for determining who is one of 'us' and who is one of 'them,' the enemy. By the time the book reaches this point she has shown both how well free Negros have been doing, and has shown how Jim Crow...