During the dark years of slavery, there were also African Americans who gained their “freedom” in the North. Considering how White Americans treated and viewed African Americans we must question if “black’s rights” actually qualified as freedom. The free blacks in the North, with all their regulations and rules, would definitely not be considered free in the modern day. Freedom is the being able to do whatever you want, and go where you need to in order to obtain security. African Americans were not given these rights; they were segregated, judged, and treated inhumanely. Society didn’t accept them, they were seen outcasts essentially everywhere in the U.S., and the government was afraid of them. Between 1800 and 1860, things were bleak and gloomy. Free blacks in the North faced limited freedoms and a variety of restrictions, politically, socially, educationally/economically, and religiously; however, the restrictions outweighed any possible freedoms they had.
One of the many limited rights African Americans had was political, specifically suffrage and jury. Document A shows how little Northern states allowed voting, and even less permitted African American males to participate in a jury process. According to the table done by Leon Litwack, one state allowed jury duty and five states had suffrage, or voting rights, in 1860. This means that only thirty-three percent of African American males could vote, while ninety-nine percent could not
…show more content…
This, however, is not fully the case; free blacks could go to school but they couldn’t apply the knowledge they received to a job. Without a chance of using what you learned in school to help society and the country as a whole, there’s really no reason to attend. Just because they had this little right, doesn’t mean they didn’t have many restrictions or limitation in their life that one should not have to