Give Me Liberty: An American History Critique - Essay Example

An excellent example is the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the 60s and 70s, this group campaigned for the freedom of black slaves. Foner (95) asserts that freedom at the time meant; being equal to the white race or not being enslaved. This freedom is contrasted with the other kinds of freedoms such as the freedom of speech, and movement, among others that are already guaranteed by the American Constitution.

Since the idea of freedom is narrowly focused, the author moves on to detail that even after the slaves are freed, they might still not have equal access to opportunities in life. In this case, the pursuit of freedom would change form to respond to the new realities. Then the focus would be on freedom concerning economic power, or even freedom concerning employee rights (Foner, 100).

According to Foner (45), these changing social conditions are primarily responsible for the change in the meaning of freedom. They keep shifting their boundaries so that in the end, the idea of freedom is extremely amorphous. The author believes that instead of asking for freedom, civil rights activists were better off demanding liberties. This could have made their pursuit more focused and could have resulted in greater gains (Foner, 55).