How might divisions within movements for freedom offer a nuanced look into history?
The fight for freedom extends to everyone. Yet within freedom movements, there are always differences on how to pursue freedom and equal rights. In my first close reading, I explored the divisions in the Women’s Suffrage movement by analyzing The Declaration of Sentiments and the reaction it warranted both to the public and to suffragists within the convention. I also explore how The Women’s Suffrage Movement distanced itself from abolitionist movements. In another close reading, I analyzed Fredrick Douglass’s brief allusion to Thomas Morris Chester in his speech “Men of Color, To Arms.” Through my writing, I was able to showcase how joining the Union Army for some Black Men represented freedom and equal right while others saw it as only a repetition of the past. In my last close reading, I studied how Esther Popel’s deconstruction of the Pledge of Allegiance in her poem “Flag Salute” depicted the dichotomy of being Black and American. But most notably I wrote an essay on Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and their joint efforts in the movement for the abolition of slavery. I was able to use both primary and secondary sources to examine both the individual and simultaneous efforts of the two men. It is through Douglass and Lincoln that I came to the conclusion that successful movements can’t be linear. Instead, successful movements must be persistent and pervasive.