The Meaning of Freedom

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The Meaning of Freedom
To a fourth grader at Fishing Creek Elementary School, freedom means, “Free to wear fake mustaches” (Curtis, 2011). Freedom, to a first grader at Dysart Elementary, means, “Not having to do work inside a little room. Instead we should go out and do the stuff we are learning” (Travis, 2014). The word, freedom, defines many things in each of us logistically, in our physical health, our spiritual walk, and our finances. To entire ethnicities it means absence from cruelty or death. In this essay we discuss the word as it affects a civil/social level which encompasses people in relationship to one another and in society.
The term, individual freedom, denotes a singular implication, but individual freedom in society is not separable. History continues to prove that freedoms in a society are not individual, but collective. Nelson Mandela wrote, “Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me” as he realized his personal freedom alone did not give him satisfaction. Many of the writings from Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Langston Hughes continuously point to the protecting, preserving and upholding of human dignity and the development of personality. Dr. King wrote, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever” while he sat in a small cell in a Birmingham jail. He continued, “The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained” (King, 1963). Oppression can come in the form of race, color, sex, but also...

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...or meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
King, M. L., Jr. (1963, April 16). Letter from a Birmingham jail [King, Jr.]. Retrieved February 22, 2014, from http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Mandela, N. (1965). The long walk to freedom. Retrieved February 22, 2014, from http://ddata.over-blog.com/xxxyyy/0/43/50/45/TS2/textes-bac/The_Long_Walk_to_Freedom.pdf
Roosevelt, E. (1948, September 28). The struggle for human rights. Retrieved February 22, 2014, from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/PDFFiles/Eleanor%20Roosevelt%20-%20The%20Stuggle%20for%20Human%20Rights.pdf
Travis, C. A. (2014, February 21). Interview by K D Tallent. What does freedom mean to you.
Wendy, M. (2005, July 30). Henry David Thoreau and 'civil disobedience'. Retrieved February 22, 2014, from LewRockwell.com website: http://archive.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy86.html

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