ABSTRACT
Blacks who were good workers before learning of the Slave Scrolls became whirlwinds of purposeful activity. The Slave Scrolls created hostility between the races by teaching blacks about the evils of a system wiped out more than a century ago. For the black community, the Slave Scrolls experience served as a bitter reminder that sheer survival rather than inherent sloth has prompted the shiftless habits that, continued over time, led many to forget that whites are threatened by black initiative and comforted by black indolence. One would have hoped that most whites would hail the black achievements as proof that any group can make it in America by pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. In that brief period after the Civil War, the newly freed blacks, despite the failure of the national government to provide meaningful reparations, made impressive educational and political gains. But their very success served to deepen and intensify the hostility of southern whites.
