Up From Slavery- How America Came To Be

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” - Frederick Douglass, I agree in this day and age struggle is what we are dealing with to make it through the perfect storm. In the United States, middle to working class poor folks are struggling to make ends meet because the wealthiest folks refuse to do their part. We however are making progress with how our communities interact today. The question remains what does struggle and progress have to do with how America came to be ?

Struggle in america during colonial and revolutionary and now modern times meant slavery, it was the time when people had to fight for what they believed in. The time in history had everything from abolitionists to rebellions to wars to even people being sold for profit. Slaves were used as mules, they did all the hard work and everyone else profited from it, the slaves used the cotton gin to pick cotton so it could be sold elsewhere in turn slaves from Africa would be sold to the US as slaves. The country then used slave labor to do the work regular southern farmers would do while they went to war. It was not until people like Frederick Douglass started to comprehend the seriousness of the slave situation that things would begin to change. 

        When Frederick Douglass began to write and read he then started to push the abolitionist idea that slaves should be equal, it came to a point where politicians began to agree. Overtime President Lincoln had thought to create an equal nation because at one point in time he owned two slaves. The question then arose, how would slaves be able to live among their captors and owners. Slaves had never knew a free world where they could look for jobs or an simple basic education. The debate of freedom of slaves then stretched into what would then be known as the American Civil War because Southern States refused to work alongside abolitionists in the North. A bigger issue had arisen in United States Supreme Court and that issue was whether or not a Negro would be free once her or she reached a free northern state, that debate was easily shut down when the courts ruled against the Negro. The ruling by the court then instilled more fear in already fearful fugitive slaves at the time but that did not stop people like Sojourner Truth who had freed herself before the ruling and went back countless times for others including her own family. A very notable person had mirrored what Sojourner Truth did but in a more modern way, Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus and was beaten countless times in the process. 

Although Rosa Parks and Sojourner Truth are two very different but equally important people they both cemented a lot of equality but sadly our nation has not as of yet gotten over it. People should not have to have a law signed for equality, wages, jobs, weather and wars, we need to be a lot more conscious of what decisions our government makes in terms of human and equal rights because it would be a lot easier to turn back the clock then work forward, at least for our government.