The Importance Of Social Citizenship During Reconstruction

During Reconstruction, the qualifications that made someone a citizen were extremely vague. What it meant to be a citizen was continually one of the most pressing questions during the time of Emancipation and Reconstruction in the South. In an effort to answer this question and secure citizenship, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, which freed all slaves in the Confederate States. With a large influx of newly freed slaves into society, the United States was not prepared to answer the question of citizenship for the freedmen. There were “top-down” efforts, in which the government would get involved and pass political acts or bills such as the Emancipation Proclamation, to ensure citizenship. Although these efforts

A citizen is defined as a member of a certain community. A way that African Americans expressed this sense of citizenship was through the establishment of black churches and attempts to reunite with family lost during slavery. The gatherings of the community in the newly formed churches created that sense of social citizenship between themselves even if they were not viewed as a “social citizen” by white southerners. In the article “Former Slaves Seek to Reunite Their Families,” one advertisement for a lost family member reads “Information is wanted of Cayrel Robinson .. any information of his whereabouts will be thankfully received by his wife” (Former Slaves Seek to Reunite Their Families). The outlying reason for reuniting with family was to establish the ideal “American Family” as well as a sense of social citizenship for themselves. The reason that this form of citizenship was the most abstract was due to the fact that there was no true tangible proof of it. With formal citizenship, one obtains a green card or passport, political gives one a ballot to cast votes and economic deals with the possession of money. However, Social Citizenship is based upon what one does for the society around them, the true meaning of what it means to be a part of a community. If a “citizen” is not active in the eyes of the members of the community, then the term citizen really means nothing at