Still enslaved

If I've learned one thing from reading The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman it's that life after freedom for blacks after the Civil War wasn't that much better than slavery before the war. At least in slavery you were protected by your master, but now you had no one to protect you. It was sudden death for any former slave who met a patroller or a member of the KKK. If they continued to work for the mean whites, then they only got paid little to nothing.