Categories: Hazel Rosetta Smith,
The Emancipation Proclamation was an official order signed into effect by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It was not a law passed by Congress, but one based on the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces.
The proclamation has been criticized and scrutinized to the present day as to whether it can be deemed as an honest effort by President Lincoln to set the slaves free or a means of Black workforce for the ongoing Civil War.
FREE is a complex word with numerous descriptive and suggestive connotations. Webster’s dictionary reads FREE to mean not under the control of power or another, having liberty, independent.
Freedom was not a word that could be fully understood by a race of people who had only known the confines of slavery. Long before the proclamation, freedom was a hard part of the work of Harriet Tubman’s effort to free her people. She had to turn that word freedom into words like trust and belief that could be encouraging in their decision to follow her.
When all you have ever known has been in captivity, every decision made without any consideration of your opinion, your feelings or your right to life, reality will demand an emotional response. How does it feel to be free and what does it mean?
After the signing of a piece of paper, after the weeping, after the shouting, after the celebratory singing and dancing, what comes next for generations of people who are suddenly given a command that they are free.
The slaves were dismissed from duty, evacuated, plopped down into homelessness by a signature on a piece of paper they could not read. Simply told they were free and ordered to go.
As we remember the plight of our ancestors, we are witnessing actions taking place with the evacuation of immigrants in present days. Our ancestors were brought here, today’s immigrants spent years of struggle and in many cases, unspeakable hardship to make it here to the land of the free.
President Lincoln signed a proclamation of emancipation and the present leader of the United States, married to an immigrant, signed a proclamation of evacuation.
Laws of behavior are mandated to prevent one’s freedom to do whatever they want to another. You do not have the right to destroy someone’s property, steal their goods, or physically harm them. The law states that you can be brought to justice, though justice is not always fair.
Fair has nearly disappeared in many facets of the law because of the actions of those who sit in high places. Let us put our focus on free thinking before setting ourselves up for freedom failure. Everyone deserves the right to be healthy, happy, and prosperous. That is what freedom is!
[Hazel Rosetta Smith, journalist, playwright, and artistic director for Help Somebody Theatrical Ministries; retired former Managing Editor and Woman’s Editor for the New York Beacon News. Contact: misshazel@twc.com]
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