Sick from freedom

The section I have read really opened my eyes. I feel it really gave me a behind the scenes look at what happened. It also give me some disbelief in the fact that I did not really think this happened. I was always taught and told that the emancipation of the slaves was the greatest thing ever and the whole cause of the civil war. And after the slaves were free many of us thought everything was good now the slaves were free and it was all just perfect. What really struck me was the fact that there was a lot of racism in the north. I was taught that the south was bad they had slaves and treated them awful but the north was like heaven and the safe place for all slaves and this book really trashed that idea. On page 27 it shows how these ex-slaves were treated in that "The mere fact that the dead bodies could be collected without the use of a coffin". When the freedmen died they were just casted aside and really given no respect. The one passage that really caught my attention was on page 35. This passage discusses how slaves were seen really as like aliens to white physicians. Such as the case of the black soldier who had gotten smallpox and went to see a white physician. However, this physician like many others bought into this racism and idea that African Americans were this other species and just because he did not know that a black man could even get smallpox, he did not want to give him any treatment because there was a medical fiction that they were different so he did not know how to treat a black man with smallpox. This book so far has really opened my eyes and made me ask, what other events have been thrown to the side in history or hidden from us because of these great ideas of "freedom" that were fought for?