The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman: Stereotypical White Discriminators

In my Honors English class, we are reading an autobiography of a fictional black woman from the reconstruction period after the civil war, called The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman.  In this story, many stereotypes are portrayed through the many different types of characters.  One stereotype of this time period was that all the white people hated the blacks. However, it is clearly shown by this novel that this stereotype is not true.  For example, at one point in the story Jane meets up with a white man who, although has a wife that hates the blacks, is very kind to Jane and gives her a place to stay at night and food to eat during her visit. Another example from this story is when Jane comes across an old white man who, rather than shunning them from his house, lets them in and gives them advice on where they need to go and how to get there.  From these examples it is clear that while many whites during this period did discriminate against the blacks, many were also against slavery and treated them just as human as anybody else.