Our last eras covered in class were the 1900's to current America.  During this time, there many revolutions of different types.  When we think of revolutions, we usually think of wars and barricades, but there was a lot more going on in this time period.  We had social and political revolutions that changed the world in their own way.

     During 20th century America we had many social revolutions.  One of the most intense civil revolutions was the fight for African American rights.  Many African Americans were discriminated against by unfair treatment in society.  Whether it was bullying or discriminating schools, African Americans were tormented by those who thought they were superior.  But soon, people such as W.E.B DuBois founded organizations like the NAACP.  Started fighting against the unfair treatment of African Americans by protesting or starting their own schools for them to have a better chance in the world.

   





https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/civil-rights-movement/essays/civil-rights-movement-major-events-and-legacies

      Hello and welcome to my next blog,  we have covered several eras during the time we were given and I had the choice of discussing freedom during the gilded age, progressive era, Spanish American war, and World War 1.  Since I personally find that World War 1 was had the biggest influence globally, I have decided to discuss it.

      
       In the article I read, which was actually Canadian, they tried to discuss why they fought the war.  What it appears like is that war propaganda was trying to sell that they were fighting the war to defend freedom.  However, the Canadian author  then points out, that in order to think of it as fighting for freedom, you would have to ignore the people that the European empires forcefully conscripted to fight their war.  Not only were many soldiers conscripted, but you could argue that some of these countries were no truly free.  Many countries fighting for "freedom" did no have women's suffrage yet.  Likewise Italy placed property restrictions on voting, and the U.S. implemented Jim Crow Laws to keep African Americans from voting.  If we look at Germany, we can see that they had total manhood suffrage.  The only other country in the war that had this was France.  So could we really claim to be fighting for freedom while our enemies were more socially free?  Instead of fighting for freedom in individuals, maybe we were fighting for freedom of nations.  trying to keep smaller nations out of the hands of the tyrants that wanted to control them.  But if we look closer, we can see that we only really cared about the balance of power.  After all France only joined because of alliances with Russia,  Britain only joined because they were trying to make sure that no one took over Belgium, and Italy only joined with promise of territory.  So can we really say we were fighting for freedom?

Article:
http://activehistory.ca/2015/11/world-war-one-a-fight-for-freedom/

     Hello, and welcome back to my blog.  This era will be covering the civil war and freedoms role in it.  However, unlike many of my other peers blogs, I will not be focusing on the freedom of African Americans.  I understand that African Americans freedom played a large part in the war; however, there are plenty of articles over the internet talking about their freedom.  So in this blog post I have decided to focus more on women's freedom (or lack thereof) and less of African Americans freedom.

     During the civil war, men on both sides rushed to the frontlines to fight for what they believed in creating a gap on the home front that was filled by women. Women before this time were usually confined to the house with jobs such as cooking and cleaning.  After war broke out women started to join the war effort in any way they could. They sowed uniforms, made food, and created medical stations for wounded soldiers.  This was the first time in American history that women played a significant part in the war effort.  After the war ended, women had the growing idea that they could take jobs after what they did in the war.  This new experience for them expanded their horizon on what they could do in society, and once confined again, wondered if they would ever see that sort of freedom again.  Here we find the first growing idea of women's rights.  During the war, many African American women were also freed from being slaves.  Once freed, they only found themselves within the confines of the house that American women had just temporarily freed themselves from.  While we see no large advances in societies idea of where women belong, we can start to see the growing concept of women's rights making small steps to the end goal of where we are today.


Article:
http://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/women-in-the-civil-war

Welcome back! The subjects covered in this unit was the settling of colonies.  Over the period from 1492-1630 we find the colonists settling in the new world.  The settlement of these colonies was inspired by many reasons, however, I will be only looking at the one reason that associates with freedom, which was primarily the freedom of religion. Many Europeans traveled to the new world to escape religious oppression from the church of England.  One group of people in particular despised the Church of England. The Puritans traveled from England to set up  a new and reformed Church.  Funny enough, the Puritans were very intolerant of other religions.  This led to the  banishment of a fellow known as roger Williams,  because the Puritans believed he was spreading "dangerous ideas".

This man Roger Williams is the very topic of the article I will analyze.  While banished, Williams built land from some native Indians and named it providence.  Here, him and a couple of his followers from Massachusetts set up a new government but with a new ideology.   That the church and state should be separated, which meant no mandatory service and no one religion to be in charge of providence.  This is now on of the first signs of religious freedom in what is soon to be America.  Roger Williams was only a 17th century Puritan preacher, but in all, he was on of the most remarkable men of the century shaping ideas into other great men such as John Locke and John Milton and an influencer on the architects of the constitution.









http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/god-government-and-roger-williams-big-idea-6291280/?no-ist

Freedom

Welcome to my blog.  Over the next 9 months I will be posting about how freedom played a significant role in American history.  As I go through American history with my class, I will be updating this blog analyzing how this theme correlates with the topics we are discussing in class.  I have chosen this theme because many people find associate America and freedom together and so I felt it would be easy.  I also feel that freedom is big part in American history making it an important topic to cover. 

I was asked to analyze an article on my topic by my teacher.  So the article was essentially trying to figure out the meaning of freedom.  In trying to explain this, they broke it up into three relevant groups.  Political and economic freedom, personal financial freedom, and freedom from the social matrix.   Political and economic freedom was described as not living in a jurisdiction that is occupied militarily or economically, and as a society that presents absolute freedom of speech from economic tyranny.  Personal financial freedom was described as being free to of externally imposed schedules, and having "the courage to act and venture out on our own".  To be free of social matrixes is to be free of influence of individual people and social conventions. to be free of a society in which constantly pressures its inhabitants to act or be a certain way.  Overall I believe that this article has a good definition of freedom.  It covers political freedom and social freedom which I feel are a very large portion of our government today.











http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/02/21/what-is-freedom/