Like many African Americans of the post-Reconstruction period, Mr. Ryder is forced to confront a not-so-distant and painful past. Chesnutt uses the story of Sam/Mr. Ryder and Liza Jane to explore the ethical dilemmas and psychological reality of moving forward with life after two great historical ruptures: the end of slavery and then the end of Reconstruction.

Reconstruction, the historical period spanning from the end of the Civil War to 1877, was the federal government’s only significant nineteenth century effort to secure the benefits of democracy for recently freed slaves. These efforts took various forms, including access to political office and the ballot box, and the establishment of freedman’s bureaus to reunite families and provide aid to newly freed slaves. This period ended when federal troops retreated and left the South to assert its own oppressive racial regime.

The needs of freed slaves like Liza Jane were staggering. Having labored in the harshest form of slavery in the Deep South, Liza Jane’s body bears all the marks of slavery and the difficult financial straits in which she found herself once freed. Because she was traded away from her husband and community, Liza Jane would have found it hard to support herself in her old age.