Ernest J. Gaines' book, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, used many historical events to connect to the character's story. Miss Jane Pittman's autobiography was published by Bantam Books in 1972 and has 259 pages. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a classic fictional book. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the story of a woman's life told when she was more than one hundred years old. The novel covers 3 main time periods: years of war, reconstruction, and slavery. In The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman it is a time of reconstruction and the novel really connects to the history of the time. The novel begins the story when Jane was a young slave. The Emancipation Proclamation was a decree announced by my President Abraham Lincoln in September 1862 and formally enacted on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in all Confederate states still in rebellion (Abbott et al. 408). Jane and the other slaves read the proclamation and their former master offered them to stay on the plantation. The slaves then gather and decide whether to remain on the plantation on leave. During that time, many whites were afraid of what the now freed slave would do. Former slaves initially did not even dream of social equality; even fewer plotted murder and mayhem, as the whites feared (Abbott et al. 439). Even if slaves are freed, the social structure of slavery continues. When Jane and some others decided to leave the plantations, patrollers spotted them and killed many of them. Jane says, “They and the soldiers of the Secesh Army were the ones who later formed the Ku Klux Klan” (Gaines 21). Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized blacks in the South during Reconstruction... mid-paper... around this time. The problem involving the racial order in society has caused many deaths not only in the book but in real life. Jane was free but lived as a slave her entire life. Jane tried to escape to the South but failed and worked the same jobs she did when she was a slave. Blacks were no longer slaves but the law, but they still lived in mental slavery, bound by the racial order. Black people suffered for many years after slavery and fought for civil rights just like Jane, Ned, and Jimmy “The One” did. Works Cited Abbott, Carol, Virginia Anderson, et al. The American Journey A History of the United States. 6. River: Pearson Education, 2011. Print.Gaines, Ernest. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.Mackintosh, Barry. “A moment of reckoning.” www.nps.gov. NP, January 30 2014. .