freedpeople
Liberated from bondage
Freedpeople refers to formerly enslaved people who have gained their freedom, particularly African Americans emancipated during and after the American Civil War.
The term appears in historical writing as a gender-neutral alternative to freedmen: The Freedmen's Bureau provided aid to freedpeople across the South.
It emphasizes the collective experience of those transitioning from bondage to liberty.
Executive order freeing Confederate slaves
- manumissionFormal freeing of enslaved
- JuneteenthEmancipation anniversary celebration
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
- liberationRelease from constraint
Thirteenth Amendment · contraband · deliverance · unshackling · release · enfranchisement
Post-Civil War relief agency
- sharecroppingFarm rent in produce
- Fourteenth AmendmentPost-Civil War constitutional addition
- Fifteenth AmendmentProhibited race-based voting denial
- land redistributionReassigning property among populations
forty acres · tenant farming · carpetbaggers · scalawags · labor contracts
Racial separation laws
- Great MigrationVast collective relocation
- Plessy v. FergusonRuling allowing racial separation
- disenfranchisementRemoval of voting rights
- segregationForced separation by group
convict leasing · memory · descendants · genealogy · oral history · heritage
Groups pooling resources collectively
- family reunificationRejoining separated relatives
- NicodemusPharisee seeking answers
- self-governanceIndependent management of affairs
- landownershipHolding title to property
Ability to read, write
- Howard UniversityHistoric Black university, Washington
- Tuskegee InstituteHistoric Black college in Alabama
- spelling booksTexts teaching word formation
- night schoolsEducational institutions with evening hours
Signing up for elections
- militiaNon-professional armed force
- self-defenseProtecting oneself from harm
- testimonySworn statement as evidence
- petitionsFormal requests for action
Emancipation Proclamation
Executive order freeing Confederate slaves
- manumissionFormal freeing of enslaved
- JuneteenthEmancipation anniversary celebration
- abolitionFormal discontinuation of practice
liberation · Thirteenth Amendment · contraband · deliverance · unshackling · release · enfranchisement
Freedmen's Bureau
Post-Civil War relief agency
- sharecroppingFarm rent in produce
- Fourteenth AmendmentPost-Civil War constitutional addition
- Fifteenth AmendmentProhibited race-based voting denial
land redistribution · forty acres · tenant farming · carpetbaggers · scalawags · labor contracts
Jim Crow
Racial separation laws
- Great MigrationVast collective relocation
- Plessy v. FergusonRuling allowing racial separation
- disenfranchisementRemoval of voting rights
segregation · convict leasing · memory · descendants · genealogy · oral history · heritage
mutual aid societies
Groups pooling resources collectively
- family reunificationRejoining separated relatives
- NicodemusPharisee seeking answers
- self-governanceIndependent management of affairs
literacy
Ability to read, write
- Howard UniversityHistoric Black university, Washington
- Tuskegee InstituteHistoric Black college in Alabama
- spelling booksTexts teaching word formation
voter registration
Signing up for elections
- militiaNon-professional armed force
- self-defenseProtecting oneself from harm
- testimonySworn statement as evidence
- frontier Americapioneers, settlers, homesteaders, homesteading, sodbusters
freedpeopleslaves
Persons owned by others
bondspeople · bondsmen · bondswomen · chattel · serfs
freedpeopleslaveholders
Owners of enslaved people
enslavers · slaveowners · masters · slave owners · planters
freed, people, free, freedom, freely, freer, freest, unfree, freeborn