Example Of Essay On The Half-Life Of Freedom Black Citizenship

John Hope Franklin, an American historian and scholar, believed that scholars had a commitment to society, and particularly that an African American scholar has a commitment to their community. He played a pivotal role in bringing about the end of legal segregation in the States. Legal segregation violated the 14th amendment of the United States constitution, and was scrapped in 1944. According to Dr. Cobb, it is vital to understand the past as a means of creating a livable, more democratic, and a future that is more humane for the people who come after you. Dr. Cobb’s talk, the half-life of freedom is a talk on the erosion of freedom, and the half-life of the idea of freedom and how it relates to the era in which we live in now.
As a historian and journalist, Dr. Cobb has several experiences that relate to race and the American history and society. Just after the American Revolution, slavery was abolished, where abolition occurred in a staggered way. This meant emancipation was to occur once a person turned 18 or 21. However, because of the value of a slave was great before emancipation, slave owners would sell their slaves to the south just before emancipation in order to prevent a great loss on their part. The process of emancipation in the north created a dynamic where slaves were sold back into slavery to the south. In some states like Illinois, it was illegal for a free African American person to enter the state, and in the same state, slaves were illegal. Therefore in a state such as Illinois at a point in history was a no African American state.
Race and American history are closely related. Slave trade fueled the American industries and economies. Slavery was a crucial pillar to the growth of the American economy. For example cotton plantations, which were in the south, required a lot of work force and labor, which was sourced through slavery. Even with the emancipation from slavery, an African American would be set free only to be arrested and sentenced to hard labor in the then parchment fields, which served as prisons. Therefore, confinement and race have been historically intertwined. At the end of the civil war, there were about 4 million slaves in the south. The south fought to retain slavery, by forbidding abolition of slave trade for twenty years, before finally slavery was abolished. Progress and regression go hand in hand, as explained by Dr. Cobb. President Barrack Obama won the election with backing from the African Americans and Latinos but with only 4 out of 10 white voters voting for Obama. However, there are attempts of moving backwards sewn with this progress. After the election of the first African American president, there is a front-runner candidate of the Republican Party, whose campaign is of racism, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant sentiments, which are contrary to the idea of democracy and inclusion.
The United States has the largest prison capacity among all other industrialized countries. In New York State, about 80% of incarcerated persons come from zip codes that are black and brown communities. There are almost one million African American men incarcerated. However, most of the prisons are in white settlement areas because in essence, the slavery settlement schemes and the plantations they worked on, that were present during the slavery period were converted into the prisons we see today. This directly affects the census, which affects senate representation and ultimately affects the development of the different communities. After every ten years, a census is conducted and from that, statistics find out how many people live in a certain area, which will reflect the number of representatives that area requires, who determine the allocation of national resources that directly affect the social and economic state of that region. However, it is important to note that these black and brown incarcerated men are not counted from the communities they come from rather, where they have been incarcerated, which is in the white communities. This clearly shows how white communities are taking advantage of this fact.
About 13% of the United States population is African American, and 37% of that represents the number of African Americans that are incarcerated. Incarceration or confinement is used to police the boundaries of the African American citizenship in many ways. Therefore, incarcerations lead to the questioning of democracy and freedom of black citizenship. This is history playing itself out in the present according to Dr. Cobb. We look to history to learn and be aware of what was in order to be vigilant on what will be. Dr. Martin Luther King gave a speech in which he encourages his people not to get weary in the face of difficulty, and to press on with the fight for a free civilization. That struggle to achieve a genuine civilization is still upon the African American population. The history of slavery should not be forgotten, rather should be used as a tool that will lead the Unite States in a free civilization in which all African American persons get the same privileges as their fellow Americans.