Achieving the American Dream :: Essays on the American Dream

From the nineteenth century to the present, the unite States has been hailed as a land of opportunity where individuals could achieve personal, political, religious, and economic freedoms. The take in of the land of opportunity was true to different degrees for the African-American sharecropper in the postwar South, the immigrant at Ellis Island, and the wealthy capitalist or globeager in the period from eighteen-sixty five to nineteen-fourteen with the African-American being at the low abolish of the rung and the capitalist being at the top.     The newly freed African-American in the postwar South had the hardest time achieving freedoms due to white men considering them as inferior. As on southerner of the time s maintenance, the ex-slave was not a free man he was a free Negro . This is best exemplified in the disgraceful Codes and Jim Crow uprightnesss of the time. If we look at the African-American of the time and compare them to the outride of the cit izens of United States then they were seriously lacking in the basic freedoms minded(p) to American Citizens. However, if we take a different approach and compare them to what they were merely decades earlier, then we see that they had gained many freedoms which they formerly did not read which elevated E.P. Holmes, a black Georgia preacher best stated when he said Most anyone ought to know that a man is better off free than as a slave, even if he did not have anything, I would rather be free and have my liberty .     African-Americans accomplished their own churches, schools, social clubs, and even businesses which provided services such as insurance, banking, tomentum cutting, and funerals to the black community. With the care of the federal government they took great steps in gaining more freedoms. The Freedmens Bureau was the first step congress took to aid the newly freed slaves. The Freedmens Bureaus main purpose was to help negotiate labor contr wa gers, provide medical care, and help set up schools for the freedmen. The second step congress took was in passing the Civil Rights act of 1866 which states that all persons born in the United States excluding non-taxed Indians, were citizens entitled to full and tinct benefits of all laws . Two years later, congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment which reaffirmed citizenship for all persons- careless(predicate) of race-born or naturalized in the United States and forbade any state from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens to disrobe any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or to deny any person equal protection of the laws.