Defining Freedom

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Defining Freedom Part I  

Beloved & Defining Freedom

1850 The Fugitive Slave Act 

1855 Sethe escaped the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky

1863 Emancipation Declaration / Proclamation*

1865 The Thirteenth Amendment - abolishment of slavery (1861 - 1865 Civil War)

1873 The story of Beloved starts in Ohio

Reconstruction Era

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Reflect and Discuss

 The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865) and its aftermath changed the United States and the lives of nearly every American, their circumstances and opportunities, in numerous ways.

Following the Union victory in May 1865, upon ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865, chattel* slavery was effectively ended any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

What and who shapes the choices and opportunities you have in your life?

chattel: an enslaved person held as the legal property of another

The World the War Made

The video The World the War Made explains many of the ways that the American society, government, and economy changed after the Civil War, as well as the way that these changes influenced the choices and opportunities individual Americans perceived in their lives.

clearings*  (Morrison uses this word in her novel.) 

The Reconstruction Era*

A clearing is a small area in a forest where there are no trees or bushes.

The Clearing: The Clearing is a place in the woods where Baby Suggs, holy, held her revival-like meetings of emotional outpouring. Weekly in the warm seasons, she would call the children of the community to laugh, the men to dance, and the women to cry until they had all tired themselves out with emotion.

The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865); it lasted from 1865 to 1877 and marked a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the United States. 

The World the War Made

• According to Eric Foner, Americans in 1865 believed they were living in a different country than the one they inhabited before the Civil War. What were some of the fundamental changes that occurred as a result of the war?
  
• According to the scholars in the video, how did the war affect the experiences and perceptions of white southerners? How were their lives different after the war?
  
• According to the scholars in the video, how did the lives of African Americans change as a result of the war? What were some of the opportunities that made freedpeople feel like they might be included as full members of American society?
• How did the lives of Americans change as a result of the Civil War?

https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/lessons/world-war-made

www.facinghistory.org

     Defining Freedom Part II

Defining Freedom

• What does it mean to be free? What can free people do that people who are not free cannot?

• What does freedom look like in your life? What gets in the way of your freedom?

Excerpt from the Emancipation Proclamation*:

'That on the first day of January , in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.'

On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that as of January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in the states currently engaged in rebellion against the Union “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”

Lincoln didn’t actually free all of the approximately 4 million men, women and children held in slavery in the United States when he signed the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following January. The document applied only to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and not to those in the border states that remained loyal to the Union.

But although it was presented chiefly as a military measure, the proclamation marked a crucial shift in Lincoln’s views on slavery. Emancipation would redefine the Civil War, turning it from a struggle to preserve the Union to one focused on ending slavery, and set a decisive course for how the nation would be reshaped after that historic conflict.

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipation-proclamation

The Thirteenth Amendment:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

www.facinghistory.org

Defining Freedom

1. Who helped bring about Emancipation? What did they do to bring it about?
2. Who participated in the debate over the meaning of freedom? 
3. What were freedpeople able to do immediately after Emancipation?
4. What aspirations did freedpeople express for the rights they should enjoy?
5. What obstacles remained in the way of achieving their aspirations?
6. What questions remained about the status of freedpeople?    

Black Codes

Did you know? In the years following Reconstruction, the South reestablished many of the provisions of the black codes in the form of the so-called "Jim Crow laws." These remained firmly in place for almost a century, but were finally abolished with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Though the Union victory had given some 4 million enslaved people their freedom, the question of freed blacks’ status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under black codes, many states required Black people to sign yearly labor contracts; if they refused, they risked being arrested, fined and forced into unpaid labor. 

Black codes and Jim Crow laws were laws passed at different periods in the southern United States to enforce racial segregation and curtail (reduce) the power of black voters.

Question 1:Frederick Douglass demands voting rights and civil equality for black Americans in an 1865 speech. (question slide 14)

We may be asked, I say, why we want it [the right to vote]. I will tell you why we want it. We want it because it is our right, first of all. No class of men can, without insulting their own nature, be content with any deprivation of their rights. We want it again, as a means for educating our race. Men are so constituted that they derive their conviction of their own possibilities largely from the estimate formed of them by others. If nothing is expected of a people, that people will find it difficult to contradict that expectation. By depriving us of suffrage, you affirm our incapacity to form an intelligent judgment respecting public men and public measures; you declare before the world that we are unfit to exercise the elective franchise, and by this means lead us to undervalue ourselves, to put a low estimate upon ourselves, and to feel that we have no possibilities like other men...

What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. [Applause.] The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us!... All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner-table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him!...

https://www.facinghistory.org/reconstruction-era/lessons/defining-freedom

suffrage: the right to vote in political elections

franchise: the right to vote

Question 1:Read again an extract from the speech in which 'Frederick Douglass demands voting rights and civil equality for black Americans' (slide 13). Name at least five reasons why Black Americans be given the right to vote. Also, be prepared to explain the meaning of underlined words.

Question 2: Toni Morrison on the Deepest Meaning of Freedom               (Open question slide 16)

'Paul D did not answer because she didn’t expect or want him to, but he did know what she meant. Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it because in that place mist, doves, sunlight copper dirt, moon - everything belonged to the men who had the guns. Little men, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted to. Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that without gunshot fox would laugh at them. And these “men” who made even vixen laugh could, if you let them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight. So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between the trees at chain-up. Grass blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn’t do. A woman, a child, a brother - a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission for desire—well now, that was freedom. ' (Beloved)

Question 2: What does 'freedom' mean to Paul D.'s in the extract from Beloved (slide 15)? (Paul D. re-memories his imprisonment in Georgia)

Personal letters. Question 3. 

Read personal letters written by Jourdon Anderson and Kurt Vonnegut. One of the underlying themes in both letters is 'freedom'. Compare both letters and in a short paragraph explain how Anderson and Vonnegut perceive/understand their 'freedoms'. Use between 150 - 200 words. 

Connect your ideas with cohesive devices &  include concrete examples. 

Examples: in the same way; in like manner; likewise; similarly; in contrast; on the other hand; unlike; regardless; however; conversely; on the contrary; nevertheless; etc. Take a picture of your text & upload in in Lesson Up. 

Question 3: Compare both letters and in a short paragraph explain how Anderson and Vonnegut perceive/understand their 'freedoms'. Use between 150 - 200 words. Upload a picture of your text.