Eric Foner American Freedom Summary

On July 4, 1776, an independent and fervent nation was born. Our Founding Fathers used an overwhelming sense of integrity and determination to fabricate the Declaration of Independence - a historical document that pleads King George III for independence and stresses the importance of freedom, equality, and natural rights. Though the Declaration of Independence signifies the birth of America and represents a powerful landmark in our history, when looked at from a broad spectrum, it can be seen as arrogant, ironic, and controversial. The Declaration states, “ … all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (“The declaration”,

Following the Civil War, the government was in the process of establishing a support system known as Reconstruction. In the reading, “What is Freedom?” Reconstruction, (1865-1877) written by Eric Foner explains how the South was in trouble. Due to the compensations that were left after the war, Reconstruction was the only hope of rebuilding the economy in the South. Along with trying to reconstruct the government situations, there were also issues that had come along that interfere with fixing the nation. The most memorable change was between different ethnicity that soon leads to slavery. Slavery was a big impact that changed people’s life dramatically. It had given the white southerners the right to control the African- American people. Overall, the Reconstruction failed its goal to give every person their equal rights.

Eric Foner had earned his doctoral degree at Columbia University, where he currently teaches as the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History. As a Historian, Author, and Researcher, Foner wrote Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad to display the reality of how the Underground Railroad thrived. The book describes the abolition movement and how it developed through individuals and societal groups and its works to help fugitive slaves gain their freedom. While there was a decline, the abolition movement proved to be effective with its rise of The New York Vigilance Committee and the New York City Anti-Slavery Society.

American beliefs and opinions give a great understanding of what an American values. The want and need for freedom is described in many different ways based on origin or social beliefs. The main backbone of America today is freedom. Through the building of an American empire everyone can’t come to an understanding of what it is to be equally free. By comparing and contrasting the perspectives of Patrick Henry’s speech to the “Virginia Convention,” to take up arms and fight for our freedom. Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” who feels it’s time to end slavery. It is clear that the struggles of the American story are still prevalent and America has not yet found a way for freedom for all.

The author says that yes, police lives do need to be protected, but they also need to be held accountable. Similarly, black lives should be protected as well, but they should not be “provided justice for their wrongful termination.” In other words, both lives should be protected, just as any life should, but both lives need to be held accountable for their wrong doings, and not punished by social media for doing what is right. Although the author does try and strengthen the support for black lives and blue lives in the article, almost all of the statistics he uses, discredit blue lives. For example, a statistic he uses is that “For every black person killed by a white cop, 71 blacks are killed by other blacks.” Another one used is, “However, the amount of police officers killed on the line of duty pales in comparison to the number of Black deaths at the hands of the police. In 2015, 42 police officers were shot and killed. That was a 14% decline from 2014. Even though the author attempts to vouch for black lives and blue lives, he tends to be a little more biased towards the black

#BlackLivesMatter has been topic that has been discussed for years now, however, often times it is twisted to read #AllLivesMatter, and while that may be true, it also attempts to take away from a minority groups agency and or empowerment. In the year 2016 we have seen a substantial amount of police officer shootings against African Americans. The two most recent incidents of police shootings involved Alton Sterling of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota. Both of these incidents also took days after the other. Sterling was selling CD’s out side a convenience store and for that reason was executed by two police officers. This week has all together been a very frustrating and heart breaking week, and when I think about what

“Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is one of the most well-known phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. These three words are the unalienable rights of man in the United States of America. If the government violates these rights, it is the American’s duty to overthrow the government. The ideas of these rights has slowly evolved over the time period since the Declaration of Independence was written. In the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, the concept of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” is drastically different in contrast to the modern version of the ideas.

Americans think freedom means liberty, which is by the freedom of speech. I believe that the first sentence of paragraph three of the Declaration of Independence is compelling for Americans today because, it makes an argument between life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence shows argument between the life of happiness and the pursuit of happiness for liberty.

All across the nation, in the news the black community has been making their voice heard, in regards to white police brutality, and murder against the unarmed black community. Many of these brutal attacks and flat out murders of unarmed black people haven’t been largely prosecuted, some officers have even been acquitted of any wrong doing or murder. This has led to outrage in the African American community at large. The shooting of an unarmed black teen named Michael Brown caused the racial strain in this country to break.

Throughout history, Americans have sought to spread the spirit of equality, which is believed to be the realization of true freedom. Before establishing this freedom, every American had only one question stuck in their head: What is freedom? Our country received it in the year of 1776 from the British through a series of difficulties and wars. African Americans defined it as an escape from slavery, while immigrants defined it as their acceptance into a new society. More yet, women of the women’s suffrage defined their freedom as their recognition into society and for their rights to be equal to that of every other man. These different perceptions of cultures/groups in America tied together to form an American view of freedom. Freedom is

The article “Black Lives and Blue Lives Matter” by Bryant Alston shows and represents the importance of black lives just like any other, police brutality, also showing how no matter the color of one’s skin, it should not affect one in a negative way or agitate others to want to look over one just because a person of color seemed as a more ‘fitting’ person for such a crime instead of other non-black, or non-hispanic, person. I completely agree with Bryant Alston’s perspective on those cases, which regard race and ethnicity.

For decades, America’s attention has been turned to the deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement. The roots of the outrage & unrest that often follow such killings go back much, much, much further. It is very obvious that there is a difficult relationship between law enforcement & the communities we are sworn to serve and protect. There are tons of studies proving police are implicitly biased against African Americans. Racism in law enforcement has had disastrous effects on society as evidenced by recent cases in the U.S.

Over the last two years in the United States the African-American people have been fighting a war within our own backyards. The Washington Post reports that since January 2015, the police have shot and killed over 175 young black men ranging from ages 18-29; 24 of them were unarmed. On the flip side 172 young white men were killed, only 18 being unarmed. With these statistics there are similarities in the numbers but, blacks were killed at rates disproportional to their percentage of U.S population (1.Washington Post). Of all unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015. With 40% being black men make up just 6% of the nation’s populations. In the wake of the killings of Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and many more the world has been made more publicly aware of injustices black people have to handle when dealing with law enforcement. Crime in the black community is nothing new in the black community or should I say black on black crime. There is a bad stereotype that has been put on black people since slavery times that I believe has help fueled the violence between the police and my people.

Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner are a few of the victims of police brutality. All of them died in the hands of policemen because they posed a “threat” and due to the color of their skin, they were seen as dangerous. Even when they pleaded for their lives, the police did not care and continued to murder them. Rice, a 12-year-old boy, was shot because two police officers received a dispatch, “of a black male sitting on a swing and pointing a gun at people,” but instead of handling the situation correctly, as soon as they arrived they shot him. By the time they realized the gun was a toy gun, it was too late. Rice had no time to react, let alone offer an explanation. Tamir Rice died at the hospital the following day. Furthermore, as of May 2017, “at least 492 people have lost their lives at the hands of American police… At least three different unarmed 15-year-old black boys have been shot and killed by law enforcement in this past month alone” (Daily News). The fact that 492 people have lost their lives due to police brutality is outrageous especially when among them are young people of color. A study published by the American Journal of Public Health revealed that “black men are nearly three times as likely to be killed by legal intervention than white men” (CNN). Instead of feeling a sense of protection from officers, many people of color become terrified when encountered with an officer. To make matters worse, most of the guilty officers never receive a conviction. In fact “the odds of an officer being convicted for murder in a police shooting is approaching lottery ticket levels” (Daily News). It is unbelievable to know that an officer has the same chance of getting convicted as he does winning the lottery. The lack of convictions allows for other officers to do the same because they

Many ideas are important within the American culture, but to the American sense of patriotism, freedom is most fundamental. The idea of freedom is central to the American politics – which is at times referred to as liberty. Since the birth of the nation, freedom has been the vocabulary of the American language and its importance cannot be underestimated. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, ranks liberty as an inalienable right. On the other hand, the Constitution reckons that it purposes to protect civilians’ liberty. The importance of freedom has even stretched further than the political arena and has prompted the birth of civil rights movements and other activist protests. The Cold War and the Civil War were all for the cause of freedom. The importance that Americans attach to freedom can also be demonstrated from the erection of statues, banishment of slavery, use of liberty poles and a right to vote for adults. For many years, women and the African Americans have for a long time fought against denial and infringement of their freedom . However, given the importance that Americans affiliate to freedom in the conceptualization of their country, it has been the subject of modifications over the course of years especially before the Revolutionary War.