Talking About Freedom: Experience and Knowledge Gained

DIS 1000: Talking About Freedom has been an extremely entertaining course, and we would like to talk to you all about it today.

Having a class at 8:30 in the morning after having high school classes starting an hour earlier wouldn't seem difficult; but it was. However, the class was always full of engagement and excitement, making participation fun and fulfilling. 

We as a class explored so many topics, and there was never a dull moment. We would now like to share what we appreciated about each event in class. 

Timelines 

The timelines we did in class were very insightful. While most of the information on there I had heard about in high school, we went far more in depth in this course. It was interesting to learn about the cause/effect relationships with events and seeing the different progressions in different time periods. 

My favorite timeline was probably the Civil Rights Era timeline because I feel it is most relevant to us. I also really liked how they were not straight lectures to sit through; I liked how Professor Smith asked us to participate and asked us our thoughts on the topics to keep it interesting. 

Each One Teach One (EOTO)

The Each One Teach Ones were great ways to learn about a situation from classmates. I think hearing them from peers who are in the same mindset and thought process as you make it easier to understand. Along with hearing from others, I too enjoyed making the EOTO. My topic was "40 Acres and a Mule", and I was able to do research, teach myself, and then bring it to life for my fellow classmates. I think it is a great way to encourage student participation!

Mock Trials

The mock trials were my favorite part of this class by far. While I do not plan to pursue a career in any form of law, I think the legal system is fascinating. Getting the opportunity to step into a role and make clear presented arguments was a highlight for me. I loved hearing my "colleagues" side and the "opposing counsels" takes as well.

 It was great to hear the hard work put in and see it progress as we moved through the course. The first one we had was our first college presentation; as we continued, we all grew more confident and sounder in our voices. I really enjoyed the mock trials, and I believe they were a phenomenal way to engage and practice public speaking and research.

Blog Posts

I think the blog posts were a vital part of this class. They were helpful in expanding our writing abilities and techniques. Clear instruction was always presented to us by our professor. I felt, after completing so many, that I would be ready to continue my writing journey throughout my years in college with the new skills I had developed. 

Movie Days

I always enjoyed movie days; it was a nice change of pace in class to watch some of the curriculum we were being taught. Most of the movies, while still having valuable lessons or being applicable to what we were talking about in class, were fun and intriguing! My favorite movie we watched was In the Heat of the Night. The movie had me on the edge of my seat- it was entertaining but also had lots of important themes and messages sprinkled throughout.

Overall Experience

Overall, this course has been wonderful. I believe we had a great professor who was keen on answering questions and helping us to success. My classmates have been lovely, and it has been a great first class to start my college career. I thank you all for being here today and will see you in a few weeks!

In the Heat of the Night Reflection

In the Heat of the Night just so happened to be one of the most intriguing movies I have ever seen.

Virgil Tibbs was the lead homicide detective 
who was questioned and harassed by
the other officers. 

Virgil Tibbs, after visiting his mother, passes through the small town of Sparta, Mississippi. While there, he is dragged to the station as the potential killer of Philip Colbert; the officers come to find out he is the lead homicide detective back in his Philadelphia precinct. Because of this, he is asked to say and help consult on the case. Through a rollercoaster of events, he finds and accuses the true killer- but not before multiple scenarios unfold.

I would like to start by addressing the time period. This movie takes place in the South during the Civil rights Era. This incredibly important time wasn't all victories though. In fact, some parts of the South were still considered quite dangerous for African Americans. During this time was also the landmark case, Plessy V Ferguson.

Because of this, it is important to note how the results of that case affected everyday life.

What was supposed to be "separate but equal" ended up being the opposite. There was no "equal"; not for black men. Mr. Tibbs was treated with brutality and condescension virtually the whole movie. One of the most vulnerable groups were still being pushed around, even with all of the progress being made in this time.

Regardless, Tibbs did not let the social hate for him stop the job he was there to perform. In fact, I think it fueled his desire to finish the case. He was in the business of taking control back, and we can clearly see that in the scene with Mr. Endicott. Nowhere in history was there ever a moment where a black man could assault a white man and get away with it, punishment free. That was a first for that age, but I cannot imagine how liberating that must have been for him to stand up for himself.

The budding partnership between Chief and Tibbs was one of a kind for this time.

I also found it interesting to watch the relationship between the police chief and Tibbs; What started as beyond rocky turned into a mutually respectable relationship. But, while the Chief's views may have changed, the towns did not. Racism did not end just because Gillespie saw the good and importance behind Virgil's work. 

I think it is imperative to touch on what happens with Miss Purdy and Mamma Caleba. Coming back to "separate but equal", nothing about what they both went through was that. Mamma Caleba should not have been the "go-to" when a woman was in trouble...in need. Not only was that unsafe, but it was unfair. Why did women have to fear and shy away, and result to horrible measures during this period?

Most of all, though, I value Tibbs' dignity and self-respect. He was not going to dumb himself down or 'play nice' to appease the people in town. He knew his worth and what he was there to do. I think that was a beautiful message: Even when the world has decided what you are or who you have to be, YOU do not have to comply and fit in that said image.

Even though the movie (and time period) was far from perfect, I was left with a positive feeling at the end of the movie, knowing that Mr. Tibbs, despite the odds, persevered and stayed true to himself.

The Dissent That Became the Law: The Legal Case Against School Segregation

The protest against segregation in schools led to a huge win for the Civil Rights movement.

In 1954, the Supreme Court was asked a simple question: does separating public school children by race violate the Fourteenth Amendment? The legal groundwork for answering "yes" had actually been laid decades earlier — in a dissent nobody was supposed to win.

That dissent came from Justice John Marshall Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The Plessy majority upheld Louisiana's segregated railcar law, reasoning that the Fourteenth Amendment protected political equality but not social equality. The Court also held that if segregation felt like a badge of inferiority, that was a matter of perception, not something the law itself imposed.

Justice Harlan's famous dissent was imperative
 in the Brown v Board case.

Harlan rejected both points. He argued that a law's true purpose matters more than its wording, and that everyone understood segregation statutes existed to subordinate one race, not to keep the races apart equally. He also leaned on the Court's own earlier ruling in Strauder v. West Virginia, which held that the law must be identical for every citizen regardless of race.

Harlan went further still. He called the majority's "badge of inferiority" reasoning a thin disguise that would fool no one. His famous line still resonates: "Our Constitution is color-blind." He even predicted the ruling would prove as damaging as Dred Scott.

For decades, Harlan's view remained the losing one. But it didn't disappear.

Between 1938 and 1950, the Supreme Court began quietly eroding Plessy's foundation, one education case at a time. In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Court held that Missouri couldn't satisfy equal protection by paying a Black student's tuition out of state — equal treatment is a personal right, owed directly, not outsourced.

Then came Sweatt v. Painter in 1950. Texas had built a hurried, separate law school rather than admit a Black applicant to its flagship university. The Court ruled that equality can't be measured in square footage or book counts alone.

Reputation, alumni networks, and standing in a profession all matter too.

The same day, the Court decided McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents. George McLaurin had been admitted to a graduate program but forced to sit apart from his white classmates. The Court held that this internal separation, imposed by the state, was itself the constitutional injury — regardless of whether his facilities were technically equal.

Around the same time, Shelley v. Kraemer established that courts enforcing racially restrictive housing agreements counted as unconstitutional state action, even though the agreements themselves were private. The lesson carried over: government enforcement of segregation, in any form, draws Fourteenth Amendment scrutiny.

Each of these cases chipped away at Plessy without formally overturning it.

Families rejoiced everywhere for the victory.

That set the stage for Brown. Public education, unlike a railcar or a single classroom, is compulsory, state-run, and foundational to nearly every opportunity a citizen will later have. If intangible harm was enough to violate equal protection for law students in Sweatt, and state-imposed separation was itself unconstitutional in McLaurin, the same logic applies with even greater force to children.

Segregating young students doesn't just risk unequal facilities. It shapes how children understand their own citizenship at the exact age that understanding is forming.

That's the legal thread connecting a lone 1896 dissent to the argument that would ultimately dismantle school segregation. Harlan didn't win his case. But six decades of precedent — case by case, ruling by ruling — eventually caught up to him.

The Court didn't invent a new principle in Brown. It finally agreed with the one Justice who saw it first.

AI Disclosure: For this AI-assisted assignment, I used Claude AI to do historical research on my topic. After prompting the tools to do research based only on academic and high-quality sources, I asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a script for an oral presentation of 4 minutes. I then asked Claude to shape the material into a blog post of between 500-600 words. I edited the AI output for readability. I also policed the linked sources for quality control. To the blog post, I added visual elements and links to sources. I also made sure the paragraphs were short and in a professional style.

Plessy V Ferguson Reflection

The rundown and discussion of the case, Plessy V. Ferguson.

In class, a few of my peers discussed the case of Plessy V. Ferguson. I would like to go over the facts of the case, the argument presented by the plaintiff, and why I found it interesting and important. 

In the year 1896, the state of Louisiana had a statue that ordered whites and blacks had to ride in separate cars on private railroads. While they are technically equal cars, it was evident that the cars for white people were nicer than the cars for black people. 

Homer Plessy had an immense impact on C.R. 

Homer Plessy, a man who was only 1/8 African American, participated in an experiment where he road in a white people only car. This experiment was to challenge the law under the 14th amendment's equal protection clause. The question to court ended up being: Did Lousiana's car act of 1890 violate this clause?

Giuliana and Bianca posed in their arguments for Plessy. They both had excellent points. 

The legal argument discussed the fact that while it was a 14th amendment case, this violated the 13th amendment as well. To quote Giuliana, she said: "The 13th amendment didn’t just end slavery, it meant getting rid of the system itself; and treating African Americans this way is a remnant of that system" I thoroughly enjoyed when she made the point that 'the law is colorblind'. It simply seemed unconstitutional for the people to be treated separately based on skin color, after every effort made to change that. 

The Biblical argument was fascinating as well; there were plenty of books in the Bible that state how we are made in the like image of the Lord. If that is so, it is not a Christian value to neglect others because of what they were born with. Bianca also made a beautiful connection, stating that black hands were present in white homes fairly often. They raised white children, cooked and cleaned for white families, etc... Why then should they be separated when their lives are so intertwined?

The law itself is obviously important, but the emotional, moral play at hand was also very compelling. I liked learning about this case and hearing what the sides had to say in order to make their claims.

Gone With the Wind | The Messages and Conclusions within

Hattie McDaniel who plays "Mammy", was the first African American to win an Academy Award.

Watching Gone with the Wind in class was extremely entertaining- I learned many lessons and drew many conclusions throughout the first part of the movie, and I would like to share them here.

Starting with the characters, I liked how each one was a little different. While they are almost nothing like the people we know today, they each carry an important message with them. 

For example, Mammy, one of the O'Hara's slaves, was nothing short of a firecracker. She was witty and held others accountable, which was interesting to see during that time period; that she may be so bold without consequence. It helped me realize that black and white people were more connected than I had thought. Looking deeper into it, we see how common it was during that time for black people to raise white children while their mothers were working or being social.

Another character that I found fascinating was Clark Gable's, Rhett Butler. Butler was an interesting man for this time period as someone who was a part of the war, even when he did not act like it. He was very different from the rest of the men in this era, who were excited by war. Rhett performed his duties but was more focused on the profit he got and the social experiences around him. I think this can be connected to our day and age, how politicians benefit from war and misfortune. It is devastating to see, but it is very common. 

Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara

Along with those two, I think Scarlett's character was well played. Someone who was supposed to be prim and proper was forced to change because of the environment that surrounded her. I liked that she was full of different emotions; I felt it encased the female perspective well. She was bright, sassy, empathetic, caring, angry, and every other feeling one could express. We simply were made to feel. And she had all the reason to be these things- this time period was stressful and took a toll on the people who lived in it.

Even though slavery is played down, we do see what slaves may have truly been treated like in the scene where Scarlett helped Melanie give birth. The young slave, Prissy, was naturally afraid and panicked by these events. Scarlett slapped and screamed at Prissy. It was understandable that Scarlett was upset; Prissy did lie after all. But the way she displayed and took out her frustration and anger on the poor, young girl, was terrible. This is just a small testament that reveals how slaves were really treated.

I would also like to touch on the reality of this movie. I think it beautifully captured what human connection looks like. Seeing the romance build and fall between Scarlett and Ashley, and then Rhett, was captivating and kept me on the edge of my seat. However, I think these events overshadow the horrifying truths of slavery. Furthermore, I don't think it was an accurate representation of what life was like then. 

The movie does feel very exaggerated, but who am I to say this wouldn't have ever happened? We see things every day we couldn't begin to imagine would come true!

Overall, I adored watching Gone with the Wind. Every part of the movie was enticing and kept me wanting more. And putting my enjoyment aside, I think there were plenty compelling stories and truths planted throughout it.

40 Acres and a Mule: The Reconstruction Promise That Never Was

William Tecumseh Sherman, Union Army General

In January 1865, with the Civil War nearing its end, twenty Black ministers gathered in Savannah, Georgia, for a meeting with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. The two men asked a simple question: what did freed people need most to build new lives? The answer was land.

Four days later, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, a directive that would reshape the promise — and the failure — of Reconstruction.

What the Order Actually Did

The order confiscated a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to Florida's St. John's River, including Georgia's Sea Islands and land thirty miles inland. Roughly 400,000 acres were set aside and divided into 40-acre plots for newly freed Black families. White residency in the district was prohibited, and Black settlers were granted exclusive control over their new communities, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

40 Acres and a Mule

Here's a detail many people miss: the order never mentioned mules. That part came later, when the Army began lending surplus pack animals to settlers so they could work their new land. That's how the phrase "40 acres and a mule" entered the American vocabulary, as the Georgia Historical Society notes.

A Fast, Real Response

Freed families didn't wait to see if the promise would hold. Baptist minister Ulysses Houston led about a thousand people to Skidaway Island, where they established a self-governing settlement. By the war's end, roughly 20,000 people occupied the land, and another 20,000 arrived in the months that followed, according to reporting from NPR's Code Switch. General Rufus Saxton was placed in charge of the settlements and tasked with securing legal titles for the new landholders.

For a brief period, it looked like the federal government might genuinely redistribute Southern land on a massive scale.

Why It Collapsed

The plan's fatal flaw was baked into its legal structure. Land titles given to freedmen were only "possessory," meaning temporary, which left settlers vulnerable to any shift in federal policy.

That shift came quickly. After Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president, and he had far less interest in radical land reform. Johnson sided with white planters who wanted their property back, ruling that the wartime land seizures could not survive the war's end. As HistoryNet reports, by 1867 nearly all freed families had been evicted from the land they had been settled on just two years earlier.

The Long Aftermath

With land gone and few alternatives, most freed families became sharecroppers, working land owned by others in exchange for wages or a share of the crop. It was technically free labor, but it often functioned as a cycle of debt that kept Black families tied to the same land, and often the same families, that had once enslaved them.

PBS Series: Many Rivers to Cross

That economic reality didn't stay contained to the 1860s. Scholars and historians have linked the failure of Reconstruction-era land reform to the racial wealth gap that persists in the United States today. As the PBS series Many Rivers to Cross describes it, Special Field Order No. 15 was "the first systematic attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves."

Why It Still Comes Up

"40 Acres and a Mule" isn't just a historical footnote. It's a reference point in ongoing debates about reparations, land ownership, and what the federal government owes the descendants of enslaved people. The order was real. The land was distributed. And then, within two years, it was taken back.

That reversal is arguably the more important story: not the promise itself, but how quickly it was broken, and what that breach meant for generations that followed.

AI Disclosure: For this AI-assisted assignment, I used Claude AI to do historical research on my topic. After prompting the tools to do research based only on academic and high-quality sources, I asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a script for an oral presentation of 4 minutes. I then asked Claude to shape the material into a blog post of between 500-600 words. I edited the AI output for readability. I also policed the linked sources for quality control. To the blog post, I added visual elements. I also made sure the paragraphs were short and in a professional style.

Reconstruction: What I Learned from Henry Louis Gates's Documentary

Watching Reconstruction: America After the Civil War by Henry Louis Gates Jr. completely reshaped how I think about this period. Most of us learn about the Civil War ending and assume the story wraps up neatly. It doesn't.

Documentary on the Reconstruction Era

On April 9th, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Slavery was over. But for the four million people who had just been freed, freedom raised more questions than it answered.

What did freedom actually mean?

Would formerly enslaved people have the right to vote, to own land, to be reunited with their families? Nobody really knew.

I was surprised to learn that even Lee and Grant couldn't agree on what came next. What shocked me more was that Lee sat at that table and never really took accountability for what he'd done- for what the Confederate South had done.

Lincoln, before his death, argued that Black veterans and educated Black men should have the right to vote. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on Good Friday, right as he was pushing to improve Black lives. That still upsets me.

Andrew Johnson took over, and Frederick Douglass didn't trust him for a second. Johnson wouldn't even shake a Black man's hand. Then came the broken promises. The Freedmen's Bureau had land set aside for freed people, "forty acres and a mule," only for Johnson to hand it right back to the same southerners who'd owned it before. Black codes and vagrancy laws followed, quietly rebuilding slavery under a new name. The KKK rose alongside them, targeting Black families simply for sending their kids to school or owning land.

The Memphis Massacre

Then came the violence. In Memphis, white mobs hunted down Black residents, burning schools and churches and leaving 46 African Americans dead. New Orleans saw similar bloodshed. It was Lucy Tibbs's and the other survivors' testimonies about what happened that helped push Republicans toward writing Black freedoms directly into the Constitution.

In a real sense, the old American republic died in December of 1865. A new one had to be built in its place, piece by piece, over the next five years. The 14th Amendment redefined citizenship itself.

It was heartbreaking to read that Black veterans and common folk alike had to arm themselves just to vote safely, deciding as groups when it was even safe enough to cast a ballot.

Map of how the states were divided

Still, by 1868, nearly every southern state backed Grant, and dozens of Black men won office.

Reconstruction wasn't a clean chapter. It was American democracy rebuilding itself, one hard-fought vote at a time.

AI Disclosure: This assignment was created using Claude AI. All of information was generated by me; I watched the documentary and took notes on what I observed, including first-person passages of what stuck out most to me. Claude AI was responsible for generating a 300-to-350-word blog post from the research I gave it. It was instructed not to do any of its own research. I, myself, inserted the sources and visual elements seen above.