Specifications and requirements overview

Freedom has been suggested as an inalienable right of the citizens of the United States since the formation of the country and is suggestedly 'right and true for every person'. This notion of freedom and liberty, in some cases, is what politicians use as the foundation for every political campaign to rouse the crowd into a historical and reminiscent frenzy and feel patriotic about their nation. Freedom is also touted as one of the high points of being an American citizen when in negotiations with other countries about how they should manage their national affairs. The promise of freedom is what history has suggested since the earliest time of the establishment of America. However, has freedom been achieved or does it continue to be a lofty Americanized goal or a nostalgic concept? Has freedom truly been achieved for 'every citizen of America'? And, if freedom has been achieved, at what cost?

Reconstruction to Modern Day

The Reconstruction era is reportedly the period that encompassed the entire nation during the time from 1865-1877 after the Civil War. However, there was a second reconstruction for the southern states in America that covered the time period from 1863 to 1877. This time period is said to have represented great change in America wherein the Confederates were debunked of much of their political power and the slaves that had been freed were enfranchised or given the rights of citizenship. It goes without saying that much violence, fighting and disagreements transpired during this time as there were periodic rises and falls of Southern Whites, Confederates, and Liberalist from the North. In the midst of all the in-fighting between the Whites of the Nation, the freedom and liberty of the Blacks lay in the balance.

Reconstruction transpired differently in different states and at different times. According to historians, federal reconstruction ended or culminated with the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) which was an executive order by Lincoln that proclaimed the freedom of slaves in ten states that were part of the southern rebellion. Less than 50,000 slaves were immediately freed and the remaining 3 plus million were freed with the advancement of the union army. Many believe, would like to believe, and even suggestedly attempt to convince that Lincoln issed this executive order out of some sense of rightness and wrongness regarding the enslavement of Black people. In all actuality, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a military strategy to aggravate and weaken the south. There was no resounding sense of liberty and the real right of Black people to be free when they did not deserve to be enslaved in the first place. He was not righting some historical and innate wrong; he was being a good, strategic soldier.

This premise regarding freedom has been cloaked in terms of White middle and upper class individuals' idea of what it means to those who were robbed of it. For individuals who have never been bound, and then to set the parameters of freedom for others is a historical truth that American would prefer to not really address and take a look at for what it really is and really means. Just as reconstruction staggered in, the end of the reconstruction process was done incrementally as well. Army intervention in the southern states ended with the compromise of 1877 which was followed up by the redemption period labeled because of the period of white southerners who enacted Jim Crow and took away many of the liberties and freedoms that had been 'given or allotted to them.

The period of reconstruction was seen as a failure. WEB Dubois in his "Black Reconstruction in America" (1935) "The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." Eric Foner, in his assertion regarding the black perspective, "Reconstruction must be judged failure… it was a noble flawed experiment, the first attempt to introduce a genuine inter-racial democracy in the United States" (255-256). Other such as Booker T. Washington asserted that the reconstruction failed because it started from the wrong premise and in the wrong place. He asserted that reconstruction was political and targeted civil rights when the real focus should have been self-determination and economic equality. During this time in American history the Ku Klux Klan was glorified as white vigilantes, romanticizing the notion of torturing black people. According to T. Harry Williams,

Reconstruction was a battle between two extremes:

the Democrats as the group which included the vast majority of the whites, standing for decent government and racial supremacy, versus the Republicans, the Negroes, alien carpetbaggers, and renegade scalawags, standing for dishonest government and alien ideals. These historians wrote literally in terms of white and black (473).

With civil rights in the 1960's came the official re-instatement of rights to Blacks in America, to some degree. There is question as to what the motivation was for this move, but some would like to suggest that it was the notion of freedom and liberty for all that prompted this swing in the way in which things transpired. However, history also reveals that not all White Americans were into the notion of freedom and liberty for all as many considered Blacks to be less than fully human, or deserve the full rights of citizenship. Again, fights and battles ensued for something that was suppose to be "free" and a right of every citizen of America. Although Blacks did not come to America of their own free will, they were significant in establishing a country that they were not welcomed as a part of. Even in the movement of civil rights, freedom continued to be illusive for many.