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
Nearly one hundred years later the Civil Rights Act was passed finally outlawing lynching. The photos are horrifying; the way people can stand around with their children and watch as a person is murdered, they were inhuman. 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. Other laws included rules for having a job; while freedmen could have jobs they had numerous restrictions. These pictures were shown on postcards, and sent out with stories of the lynching. These groups and even non-members would hold public hangings, or lynching, of former slaves and other blacks. with liberty and justice for all," how does that work when people are terrorized for being different. The number of men, women and children killed is unknown, although there were pictures taken of the public hangings. If you held a job for longer than a one month period there must be a labor contract, and if you were to quit "without good cause" you could be arrested and lose your wages. While looking through the photos you can see the expression on the faces of the bystanders, they are smiling and laughing, as if they are at a picnic. The Mississippi Black Codes of November 1865 was considered "an act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen," similar to the Bill of Rights. 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.
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Acceptance Essays
