Freedom and Terror
What does freedom mean to you? To most people freedom is part of their everyday lives, it is the knowing that you can go out to public places and not be threatened. The basic rights that we take for granted today, like for example freedom of speech and the right to bare arms, were merely dreams to the freed slaves of 1865. Although they were considered free by the national government, ex-slaves were not free, they were constantly terrorized by whites. The North had won freedom for slaves; however it was the South that would place the limitations on them. State governments set up what were known as Black Codes, laws that defined freedom for African Americans in ways that were similar to slavery, to regulate and control the former slaves. Whites in the South formed racist groups to terrorize African Americans and whites that were against slave
ry, the most notorious being the Ku Klux Klan. These groups and even non-members would hold public hangings, or lynching, of former slaves and other blacks. Freedmen, free negroes and mulattoes were constantly haunted by the enforcement of Black Codes and fearful of public lynching and the Ku Klux Klan, after being released from slavery. It sickens me that groups such as the Ku Klux Klan as still around today, and how ignorant people can be, even after almost one hundred and fifty years. I will never understand why the color of a persons skin should affect the way they are treated, are they not still human beings? White slave owners were able to rape their female slaves over and over again and nothing happened to them, however if a black man were to rape a white woman he would have been hung. This is America, we are supposed to be "one nati
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 573
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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