Freedom Redux, 2021

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln introduced and skilfully negotiated the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all enslaved people throughout the Southern states. As groundbreaking as this was it wasn’t until June 19, 1863, when Texas was forced to free the enslaved within its territory. It would be nearly 100 years later when both President Kennedy and President Lydon B. Johnson's administration, MLK and other Civil Rights leaders would lock horns and negotiate the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in hiring, promoting, and firing and in public accommodations and federally funded programs. The 1965 voting rights act signed into law aimed to overcome the legal barriers at state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Although the voting rights act would experience a series of amendments after 1965, it can symbolically be viewed as another massive attempt to make Black Americans well... Americans. To this day the quest for Black American liberation continues as a worthy yet unfinished project whose struggle is inextricably linked to all Americans who find themselves greeted by lady liberty in NY harbor.