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Could you please help me correct my grammar on my US history essay?

By the time they changed their owners, they lost everything but their bodies. Everyone in the family had to work or no food would be sold for that person by the land owner (The Journal of Negro Education, 46-65). For that reason, Washington taught his people at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in agriculture and specific career that colored people needed for their everyday life. He did not write anything related to the difficulties that farmers face when they sharecrop from their owners. When the slaves were freed and given the promise of equality, they discovered that racism and intolerance kept them from achieving any sort of equal standing with white Americans.

Public Comments

1. First sentence comes out of nowhere and it's connection is unclear, and I have no idea what you're attempting to say, but the sentence is grammatically correct. CHANGED THEIR OWNERS is meaningless. BECAME FREE is what you mean. I don't know what you mean by LOST EVERYTHING BUT THEIR BODIES. Rewrite that first sentence. Have a clear idea of what you're trying to say. Second sentence. sold--use the word PROVIDED instead. Active voice would be preferable: "or the land owner would provide no food for that person." and specific career--has no meaning and I don't even know what you're attempting to say. taught WHAT colored people needed. relating to the difficultires that farmers might face as sharecropers. last sentence ok but WHEN might be changed to AFTER.
2. By the time they changed their owners, they lost everything but their bodies. Everyone in the family had to work or no food would be sold for that person by the land owner (The Journal of ***** Education, 46-65). This sentence is incoherent. Is it that when people were sold, they lost everything? Are you talking about sharecroppers here? Changing plots of land? "no food would be sold by that person for the landowner" means what - would the owner refuse to put a certain cropper's production on the market? (if so, what became of the food?) Washington taught his students, not his people. He taught them agriculture (not "in agriculture") and careers (not career). I would not say "colored people" without putting it in quotation marks. their everyday lives, not life. Farmers were sharecropping on the land of others. They were sharecropping for the landowners. "their owners" sounds like you mean slaveholders. When the slaves were freed should be Although the slaves were freed or After the slaves were freed. Good luck!
3. I presume that before the following paragraph you have identified who are the subject matter of your essay otherwise, I would agree with one of the responses that your essay starts from nowhere and does not have proper references as to who and what you are writing about. Is this the start of the essay? if so, i suggest you start all over again by first making reference to the identity of the subjects or characters in the essay. Anyway the portion as written can be redrafted as follows: Each time the ownership of a negro or of his family changed, they lost everything but their bodies Everyone in the family had to work or no food would be sold (provided?) for that person by the land owner (The Journal of Negro Education, 46-65). For this reason, at the Tuskegee Institute,Washington educated his people in Alabama in agriculture and in specific skills which colored people needed to use in their everyday life.(It seems there is a gap between the last sentence and the following sentence since there is no relation at all regarding teaching and writing) He did not write anything related to the difficulties that farmers faced when they sharecrop with their owners. When the slaves were freed and given the promise of equality, they discovered that racism and intolerance kept them from achieving any sort of equal standing with white Americans. (It is not grammar alone which you should worry about. it is also the coherence and the sense of the essay. what you wrote is not at all clear because a reader would not be able to understand what point you want to put across. maybe you should rewrite the entire thing)