The freedom of African- Americans came as a result of the abolition of slavery after the Civil War. Nearly all black persons were enslaved and endeavored to liberate themselves from the white masters. This essay examines the economic, political and social challenges that the freed African- Americans encountered and how they responded to overcome them.
The most severe difficulty after freedom was in the economic sphere. Though the freed men were emancipated and could enjoy constitutional freedoms just like the white Americans, their economic power was badly distorted by slavery. They found themselves extremely poor. As slaves, the blacks mainly worked in the fields providing cheap labor. They lacked special skills. To make it worse, slave masters did not take the slaves or their children to school (Stampp, 54). As a result, formal jobs were not available for the freed men. After they were set free, they became slaves again to their economic situation.
The main factor that escalated the economic problem was that blacks lacked access to factors of production (Hofstadter, 143). Upon being freed, they found themselves with no assets and worse still, no steady means of acquiring them. Most importantly, freed men did not have access to land, which is the most important factor of production. They had wrongly believed that the government would give them land to facilitate their settlement as equal citizens. That did not happen and they had to start from scratch. In addition, they could not access credit from the whites. No white could give loan to them since a freed man was poor and did not have security for the loan. In addition, the disdain and prejudice the whites had against blacks only worsened the situation. This made it impossible for blacks to purchase even very small pieces of land as the whites they had worked for as slaves would not sell to them.
The freed men had to find ways to get out of the cycle of poverty. For a start, they had to work for wages due to limited options at their disposal. Both men and their wives had to sacrifice to work in the farms for sustenance. Other women performed household work for the whites. Freed men who were a little luckier secured sharecropper agreements with farm owners who let them use their farms for an agreed share of the produce. These economic activities enabled them to send their children to school to learn formal trades.
On the social front, the greatest challenges to African- Americans were to reconstitute the family and overcome racial prejudice. The freed men valued family unit to the greatest extent. However, due to slavery, they had no power to keep their families intact. Family members were lost either due to death or separation when a member of a family was sold to a different slave-owner who lived elsewhere. Children rarely grew up in a family with both parents. A child who had the opportunity to be raised by the mother was one of the luckiest. It was upon the slave master to decide whether a slave could live with the wife or even visit incase the husband lived elsewhere.
Immediately after freedom, the black women withdrew from working in the fields in order to look after the family. This was fuelled by the resentment to the masters generated by forcible separation. Freed men began to look for members of their families that had been taken away even two decades before. Some were successful and where happily reunited. Sadly, others were unable to trace their kin as they lacked any records of their movements while others had died. To further demonstrate how families were held in high regard by the African-Americans, most of them undertook to legalize their unions so as to be officially recognized. Official recognition of black marriages was not provided for when they were in slavery. Some white plantation owners also contributed to family distress for the freed men post emancipation. Since they could no longer secure free or cheap labor, they exploited the economic vulnerability of the freed men. They cleverly manipulated apprenticeship laws in order to keep black children working for them without approval of the parents. Blacks had to struggle to free their children from the bondage of apprenticeship, some even offering to pay off for their release.
Slavery also led to many deaths in black families leaving most black children orphans. This was as a result of poor living conditions which in turn led to diseases. Due to poverty, blacks had no access to proper medication. Orphans had to live with relatives and missed the opportunity to enjoy the care and protection of biological parents.
Efforts to fight unequal treatment were given a boost by President Johnson who sympathized with the situation of the African-Americans. Immediately he assumed office, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. His recognition of the plight of blacks was significantly influenced when he was a teacher at a segregated school for Mexican- Americans. The Civil Rights Act officially outlawed discrimination on all fronts. It enabled blacks to have equal job opportunities as the whites. Education of blacks was also improved as they were able to access education institutions that were previously no go zones for them. The Achilles heel to the Civil Rights Act was the literacy tests that the Black’s had to undertake in order to vote. Most Blacks were not educated by then and failed the test in large numbers. This was used to curtain their rights to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 abolished the tests and since then, the onus to protect voting rights was given to the Federal Courts. This led to a tremendous increase in registered black voters and since then, African-Americans have enjoyed the right to elect leaders of their choice for political representation (Oates, 125).
In conclusion, it is evident that the freed men faced so many difficulties. It is worthy of note that they relentlessly fought to overcome these challenges and it is this fight that led to their complete emancipation from all forms of discrimination. To date, African-Americans enjoy equal rights to those accorded to any other citizens of the United States and have opportunities to thrive like any other Americans.
Works cited
Anderson, Wayne. Brown V. Board of Education: The Case against School Segregation. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 2004. Print.
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. 7th Ed. Princeton, N.J: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2007. Print.
Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York: Knopf, 1948. Print.
Oates, Stephen B. Portrait of America: Vol. 11. Boston, Mass: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Print.
Stampp, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877. New York: Knopf, 1965. Print.
