Understanding African Americans' Definitions of Slavery and Freedom

As we celebrate #Juneteenth, let us keep in mind that African Americans during the Civil War distinguished between *abolishing slavery* and *freeing people.* Many formerly enslaved people did not feel *free* in 1865 and thereafter, and they clearly articulated why. A thread 1/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

On January 12, 1865, General William T. Sherman met with twenty Black leaders in Savannah, Georgia, over the future of African Americans in the area. These African Americans gave this Union general a crash course on their definitions of slavery and freedom. 2/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Slavery meant “receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent,” said the group’s spokesman, Garrison Frazier. Freedom was “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor.” To accomplish this—to be truly free—we must “have land.” 3/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Formerly enslaved people were saying everywhere to Union officials: Do not abolish slavery and leave us landless. Do not leave us landless and force us to work the land of our former enslavers. Do not force us to work the land of our former enslavers and call that *freedom.* 4/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Four days after meeting with Savannah’s Black leaders, General Sherman's issued Special Field Order No. 15 to rid his camps of runaways and punish Confederates. The order provided African Americans with as many as 40 acres of land in coastal GA and SC and an old army mule. 5/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

But reparations did not fit racist illogic. White settler colonists on US-provided land, taken from Native nations, were deemed receivers of American freedom. Black people on US-provided land, redistributed from rebel Confederates, were deemed receivers of American handouts. 6/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Racist Americans claimed African Americans were demanding reparations because they were lazy. If any group should be called lazy, it was the enslavers, who had “lived in idleness all their lives on stolen labor,” a free Black woman wrote to Pres. Lincoln during the Civil War. 7/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Many Americans said African Americans did not have an economic right to the Confederate land. “We has a right to the land," Virginia’s Bayley Wyat replied. "Our wives, our children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locates upon.” 8/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Racist Americans imagined that African Americans would not be able to take care of themselves on redistributed land. “We used to support ourselves and our masters too when we were slaves and I reckon we can take care of ourselves now,” one African American responded. 9/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

In the summer and fall of 1865, African Americans were evicted from redistributed lands as former Confederates passed "Black codes" at southern constitutional conventions. These racist codes—like written and unwritten codes today—bound the very people who were called free. 10/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

Reflecting on all this anti-Black racism, on all this racial injustice and inequity after the Civil War, one Union veteran asked, “If you call this Freedom, what do you call Slavery?” 11/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023

On #Juneteenth, we can connect those who fought to preserve and expand slavery with those fighting to preserve and expand racism today. Their racist ideas are similar. Their attacks on antislavery/antiracism are similar. Their wars for freedom *to dominate* are similar. 12/

— Ibram X. Kendi (@DrIbram) June 19, 2023