Imagine being a person full of intellect, surrounded by many people that act like they are smarter than you but you never get the opportunity to show the people your intellect. This is life in the 1900’s, African-Americans had to believe that they were inferior to White Americans. Slavery made African-Americans believe that they we not as smart than White American. W.E.B DuBois, author of Strivings of The Negro People, express his emotion by talking about this issue and explains how it feels to be one of those people. He explains how freedom isn’t just being able to do what you want to do. Freedom is the ability to express your thoughts as a society and to be treated the same as everyone else.
Today the word freedom can most likely have a different definition early in the 1900’s. Racism still exists in our world but not as much it has in the past century. Racism created many issues that made African-Americans believe they were inferior to White Americans even after slavery was banned. Not to mention scientists i the past used to measure peoples intelligence based off the size of each persons head. This correlates to this idea because the measuring was biased and didn’t help the African-Americans. Also when Afircan-Americans were free society in their time didn’t help in making them as equal as others. W.E.B DuBois explains in his writing by saying, “The Freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” He says this because African-Americans were treated differently and possibly worse after slavery was banned because they had as much potential as White Americans but never had the opportunity to project their intelligence with the American society. DuBois is Afircan-American so he can relate to this issue or possibly his parents. Being free doesn’t mean to be able to live freely without an owner, being free is living life at it’s fullest, also to be able speak freely, participate in changing society within the community freely.
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