Town Hall

 Town Hall (meeting)

In class we had to pick a leader in history who represented and stood for the rights of people. I chose Lucretia Mott. In this speech we had to play the person we choose and say what they beleve and play them as if they were talking in a town hall meeting.

Friends, I thank thee for the chance to stand before thee this evening.

I was raised among Friends — thee knows this word, "Quaker" — and from the time I was a small girl, I was taught a simple truth: that the Light of God dwells in every soul alike. Not in some souls more than others. Not in the master more than the servant, nor the rich man more than the poor. Every soul, equal, and every soul free.

I did not come to this belief by reading it in a book, though I have read many. I came to it by watching. When I was young, I taught school for a time, and I found that the young women who taught alongside me were paid but half of what the young men were paid, for the very same work. It seemed a small wrong beside the great wrong of slavery — and yet it planted a seed in me. For once a body sees that unfairness can be written into the very rules of a place, dressed up as custom, as "the way things are done" — that body cannot help but look further, and ask: what other wrongs have we simply agreed to stop noticing?

And so I looked further, Friends. I looked at the South, and I looked at our own North too, for we are not
so innocent as we like to think. I looked at men and women bought and sold like sacks of grain. I looked at children torn from their mothers' arms and carried off to be sold at auction, never to be seen again. I looked at the sugar in our bowls and the cotton on our backs, and I asked myself — whose hands picked this? Whose back was bent to grow it? And what price did they pay, that we might have it cheap?

I could not look upon these things and call myself a follower of the Light, and stay silent. Silence, Friends, is its own kind of speech. It says: I am comfortable, and comfort is enough for me. But comfort is not enough. Not while a single soul in this land is held as property instead of person.

Some tell me this is not a woman's place to speak on such matters. That I ought to leave the great questions to the men, and busy myself elsewhere. I say to thee plainly — if the house is on fire, I do not ask permission to cry out. And this house, this whole nation, is on fire with the sin of slavery, and every one of us, man and woman both, is called to carry water.

I have heard it argued that this is a matter for the Southern states alone, that we in the North ought not meddle in it. But Friends, a wrong done to one soul is a wrong against every soul, for we are none of us free while others are chained. This is not merely their sin to answer for. It is ours, so long as we buy what their bondage produces, and look away from how it is made.

So I ask of thee tonight — not thy pity, for pity changes nothing. I ask thy conviction. Speak of this in thy
homes. Refuse the goods grown by unpaid hands, when thee is able. Open thy doors to those who flee northward seeking freedom. And above all — do not let comfort silence thee, as it has silenced so many good people before.

I believe, with my whole heart, that the day will come when this nation looks back and wonders how it ever tolerated such a thing. Let us be among those who did not wait for that day to arrive before we spoke.

I thank thee for thy patience in hearing me.

40 Acres and a Mule

 40 Acres and a Mule

The Promise That Almost Was In January 1865, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman met with 20 Black ministers in Savannah, Georgia, and issued Special Field Order No. 15 — setting aside roughly 400,000 acres of confiscated coastal land, from Charleston, SC, to Florida, divided into 40-acre plots for newly freed Black families.

The mule came later, when the Army lent surplus pack animals to help settlers work the land. Around 40,000 freedpeople settled within months, building self-governing communities like the one on Skidaway Island. But the land titles were only possessory, not permanent, a wartime measure, not real ownership.

That made the whole promise dependent on federal oversight staying in place.It didn't. After Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson took office, treated the order as a temporary wartime measure, and ordered confiscated land returned to former Confederate owners. By 1867, nearly all the freed families had been evicted and pushed into sharecropping — a system that often left Black families in cycles of debt to the same landowners their ancestors had been enslaved by Special Field Order No. 15 didn't fail on its own merits — it was reversed by a change in political leadership. That's why it still resonates today: it represents the road not taken.

What strikes me most about Special Field Order No. 15 is
how close it came to reshaping American history — and how fragile that closeness turned out to be. Forty thousand families didn't just receive land; they built governance, agriculture, and community infrastructure in a matter of months, proving the promise wasn't utopian but entirely workable. The undoing wasn't a failure of the freedpeople or the policy's design — it was a single presidential transition and a legal technicality about "possessory" titles.

In my view, this is what makes the story so haunting: it wasn't inevitable. Reconstruction's broader collapse gets treated as historical fate, but Sherman's order shows there was a functioning alternative on the ground, actively working, before it was dismantled by political will alone. That distinction matters — between a policy that couldn't work and one that wasn't allowed to continue.

Final

 Good morning, everyone. Today I want to talk about two things that ended up being connected in ways I didn't expect: my DIS1000 class on freedom, and the Summer Advantage program that brought me to High Point University a full summer before my first real semester.

What Talking about freedom Taught Me About Freedom

Before this class, I thought I understood what freedom meant. I could have given you a dictionary definition the right to do what you want without being controlled. But my talking about freedom class showed me that freedom is a lot more historical, than that.

One of the biggest things I took away from this class was a real understanding of the 14th Amendment and the history behind it. I honestly didn't know much about it beyond the name. Through this class, I learned how central it is to American freedom how the 14 admendment redefined citizenship, guaranteed equal protection under the law, and became the foundation for so many later fights for civil rights.Understanding the 14th Amendment didn't just teach me a historical fact. It changed how I think about freedom as something that had to be built, amendment by amendment, court case by court case — not something that just existed from the start.That connects to one of my favorite parts of the class: the timelines. We built out four different timelines over the semester, and each one told a different piece of the American story.

Seeing history laid out visually like that, in order, made everything click in a way that reading a textbook
never did. It wasn't abstract anymore. I could see the shape of it.

The movie days helped with that too. Watching films tied to what we were learning gave me a clearer picture of what these historical moments actually looked and felt like, and how directly they connect to where we are now. It's one thing to read about a time period. It's another to watch it and realize how the world we live in today grew directly out of it.

On top of the history itself, this class helped me personally. I used to get nervous presenting in front of people. Because I was with the same group of students five days a week, I got comfortable fast. I wasn't presenting to strangers  I was presenting to people I saw every day, who were figuring it out right alongside me. By the end, I wasn't just less nervous. I actually knew how to improve my presenting, not just survive it

What Summer Advantage Gave Me

The class was only half of the picture. The other half was Summer Advantage itself — the chance to actually live at HPU a full summer before my
real first semester even began.

The biggest thing was getting to see the same faces every single day, five days a week. There's something about that kind of repetition that builds trust fast. By the second or third week, these weren't just people I recognized from class — they were people I actually knew. I wasn't guessing who to sit next to or worrying about walking into a room alone. That comfort carried into everything else I did that summer.

Living together made that even stronger. When you're not just seeing people in class but sharing meals with them, hanging out after hours, and figuring out the small day-to-day stuff of being somewhere new — together — the friendships move faster and go deeper. I ended up with a group of genuinely good friends, some who already feel like family to me. I didn't expect to be able to say that after only a few weeks, but that's exactly what happened.

By the time the real fall semester rolled around, I wasn't walking onto campus as a stranger. I already knew people. I already knew my way around. I already knew what it felt like to sit in an HPU classroom and speak up without hesitation. Summer Advantage didn't just get me ahead academically — it gave me a head start on the part of college that's harder to prepare for: actually feeling like I belonged there.

Looking back, talking about freedom taught me about freedom in a way that felt real through the 14th Amendment, through the timelines, through watching history unfold on screen instead of just reading about it. And Summer Advantage taught me about myself, how I handle new places, new people, and how much faster I grow when I'm not doing it alone
.

Thank you.

 Reaction to EOTO

Writing this blog post about “40 Acres and a Mule”

helped me better understand an important part of Reconstruction that I did not know much about before. Before researching this topic, I had heard the phrase “40 Acres and a Mule,” but I never knew where it came from or why it was so significant. Learning that the federal government actually promised land to formerly enslaved people, only to take that opportunity away a short time later, was surprising and disappointing.

In my opinion, the promise of land could have completely changed the lives of many freed families. After centuries of slavery, owning land would have given people the chance to support themselves, build wealth, and create a better future for their children. Instead, when President Andrew Johnson returned the land to former Confederate owners, many Black families lost the opportunity to become independent. They were forced into sharecropping, which often kept them trapped in poverty and debt. I think this decision had long-lasting effects that continued for generations.

One part of this topic that stood out to me the most was that the original order never actually promised a mule. I had always assumed the phrase was written into the order, but I learned that the mules came later when the Army loaned surplus animals to help settlers work the land. It showed me how history can sometimes be misunderstood or simplified over time.

Researching this topic also made me realize how one government decision can affect people for decades. The failure to follow through on the promise of land ownership contributed to economic inequality that historians still discuss today. While no one can change what happened in the past, I think it is important to learn about these events so we can better understand why certain issues still exist.

Overall, I enjoyed researching this topic because it taught me something new and challenged what I thought I already knew. It reminded me that history is not just about memorizing dates and events but about understanding how decisions impact real people. This blog post gave me a greater appreciation for the importance of keeping promises and recognizing how historical events continue to influence society today.

Gone with the wind

Gone with the Wind Reflection

Gone with the Wind is a movie made in 1939 Also with a book published in 1936. The story is
told from Scarlett O’Hara the daughter of a wealthy Georgia plantation owner as she navigates love loss and survival during the different periods of the war before, during and after the war. The movie follows her life from being from the south through the burning of Atlanta and the crash of confederacy and then into the tribulation of reconstruction. During the time when the movie was released it rose to become one of the most popular films ever released and still remains a very moving film. 

This film relates directly to how the history we have learned over in our talking about freedom class because it discusses the civil war and reconstruction from the point of view of a white southern planter class level. It shows the destruction of Atlanta and economic collapse of the plantation system and then the social disruption after the war. This film reflects this narrative and mostly talks about enslaved characters that are portrayed as loyal content. 

My opinion of this movie was both good and bad and I will go into detail why. On one hand I really appreciated this movie Gone With the Wind because it was very technical and cinematic. For a film made and released when it was in production and cinematography, Scarlett O’Hara’s multifaceted character was really fantastic. It also greatly matters historically because it explains to us in detail how white Americans in the 1930s wanted to remember that period in time. Studying  as a primary class of cultural memory rather than as a reliable record makes it more valuable. On the other hand I think that this film is dangerous in that way when it is watched uncritically. This is because it is really entertaining and emotionally engaging, this leads it to shape how generations of Americans have an inaugural picture of the way history played out. They did inaccurately portray slavery in history because it resented slavery as just a background detail and the love story as the main story. 

Overall my opinion about gone with the wind is worth studying but not as a realizable history

resource. It should be approached as a case study in the popularity of the media and can reinforce a comfortable but false version of the past and why it is important to disconnect the movie from the accurate history of what happened. While watching it critically, having those facts in my head of history and the reconstruction makes the movie more valuable in this class because it shows how words and history can be manipulated and twisted. His movie's popularity did real cultural work because it didn't just reflect lost cause ideology it helped share and prove to Americans for generations for years to come. If we only study history through documents and textbooks we miss how much of what people may believe about the past may come from unfactual sources like movies. 

The heat in the night

 Reflection on the Heat in the night movie.

The heat of the night is a crime drama set in 1967 in a small town called Sparta Mississippi. This movie is
meant to tell the story about a murder in Sparta and how Bill Gillespie, a police chief, was quick to arrest the first person he sees that could be the perpetrator, Virgil Tibbs. Tibbs was actually visiting his mother in Sparta and is actually a homicide detective and was wrongfully arrested. People soon found out that he was a detective and wanted to add him to the case to help figure out who the perpetrator was. However, since Tibbs was African American, Bill Gillespie wasn't too happy to be working alongside him on the case 

I really liked how this film showed a point in history that not many people talk about as much as slavery. This movie focuses on the time after slavery and shows how white individuals  aren't directly discriminating against African Americans but they still aren't accepted and trusted within their lives. This point in time wasn't forgotten but sometimes gets pushed to the side when being talked about 

This film may show how Tibbs the African American in the film but also celebrities how african america got more freedoms and were even allowed to work alongside a white man. This was big back then because not too long before the movie was made African Americans were not allowed to sit in the same vicinity as white people so have an African American play a major role in a movie alongside white people is a big deal.

One part of this movie that took me back was the infamous slap. Not only was i shocked but i did some research after about and so was everyone else in history. After Tibbs was slapped by wealthy plantation owner  Eric Endicott, he wasn't pleased about working alongside an African American. The part that really made everyone gasp was when Tibbs returned the slap right back to Eric. This part was very shocking back then because this was one of the first times especially in a movie that an African American fought back. African Americans technically had freedom but still were not treated equally as white people. This also shocked people when it first came out because yes african america were present in movies but mainly played maids servants and very low and small roles, so Tibbs being a main character really stood out.

They quoted the slap as “the slap heard around the world”, because it had such a big movement. 

This movie also shows the progress of the equality of african americans, because it starts off as an african american being wrongfully accused of a murder for simply just bein their, to ending it with him being respected and trusted more then the white detectives because he didn't jump to conclusion. Another reason I liked this movie was because it talked about the message more of history itself. It resembles how slaves had to slowly earn their freedom over time, Tis had to earn his respect in a town and work with people that didn't want to work alongside him.  

Plessy V Furguson

Plessy V Ferguson 

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May it please the Court. Homer Plessy boarded the East Louisiana Railway on June 7th, 1892, holding a valid first-class ticket, and was ordered into a separate car for one reason only: the color of his skin. We are here to argue that Louisiana's Separate Car Act of 1890 violates two amendments this nation ratified specifically to end that kind of state-sanctioned racial rank — the Thirteenth and the Fourteenth Amendments. **First, the Thirteenth Amendment.** This amendment did not simply abolish the buying and selling of human beings. It abolished the incidents of slavery — every remnant of the system that marked one class of citizens as inferior to another under law. A statute that orders citizens into separate railcars, enforced by criminal penalty, based purely on ancestry, revives exactly that kind of badge. It tells the traveling public, by force of law, that colored citizens are unfit to sit beside white ones. That is not a neutral regulation. That is a caste marker, and the Thirteenth Amendment was written to forbid it. **Second, the Fourteenth Amendment.** Section One guarantees every citizen the equal protection of the laws and forbids any state from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizenship. Mr. Plessy is a citizen of Louisiana and of the United States. The right to travel on a public conveyance, on equal terms with every other paying passenger, is one of the most basic privileges of that citizenship. Louisiana cannot use the railroads — corporations chartered under state law and holding themselves out as common carriers to the entire public — as instruments of racial separation. This Court does not have to take our word for how seriously it should treat racial classifications by the state. It has already ruled on this question. In **Strauder v. West Virginia** (1880), this Court struck down a law barring Black citizens from jury service, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees freedom from "discrimination which implies legal inferiority in civil society" — a brand, in the Court's own words, that is "practically a badge" of inferiority stamped on a class of citizens by the law itself. That is precisely what the Separate Car Act does to Mr. Plessy. It does not merely separate; it *ranks*. It tells every passenger, and every conductor, which race the law considers worthy of the better car. We would also direct the Court's attention to the deprivation of property without due process. Being classified and treated as white carries real, tangible value in daily and civil life — the "master-key," as counsel has put it, that opens doors of opportunity. Louisiana's statute lets a train conductor make that determination on sight, with no hearing, no standard, and no appeal, and then criminally punishes the passenger for disagreeing. That is a taking of a valuable civil status without due process of law, guaranteed against by the Fourteenth Amendment's own text. Finally, we would remind the Court that the Fourteenth Amendment was written in the plain language of universal citizenship. It draws no line between races. A law that does draw such a line — that assigns rights and burdens by ancestry alone — cannot be squared with an Amendment whose entire purpose was to strike race from the law of the land. For these reasons, we ask this Court to hold the Separate Car Act unconstitutional, and to affirm that the Constitution protects one class of citizens, not two. Thank you.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

AI DISCLOSER; for this AI assisted assignment I used valued aid to do history research on my topic. After prompting the tool to do research based only on academic and other high-quality sources, I asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a script for an oral presentation of four minutes. I then asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a blog post of between 500 and 600 words. I edited the AI output for reliability. I also policed the linked sources for quality control. To the log post, I added visual elements and links to sources. I also made sure the paragraphs were short and in a personal style.

—-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Reconstruction: The Story I Never Actually Learned

Growing up, my understanding of this era started and ended with one sentence: Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.That was it. Happy ending.

But watching this documentary for class, I realized how wrong that framing really is. Emancipation wasn't the end of a story. It was the beginning of one of the most complicated chapters in American history.

It technically started on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Just five days later, on Good Friday, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, cutting short whatever vision he had for what came next.

What struck me first was how quickly hope turned into resistance. Formerly enslaved people spent the early days of freedom searching for family members who had been sold away, placing newspaper ads and walking long distances just to find a mother, a child, a spouse. That alone was heartbreaking to learn.

Even something as basic as the legal status of slavery was unresolved. The 13th Amendment had passed Congress in January 1865, but it still needed to be ratified by individual states before it actually meant anything.

Then came Reconstruction itself, and honestly, this is where I was most shocked.

I had no idea that Black Codes and vagrancy laws basically recreated slavery under a different name. If a Black person didn't sign a year-long labor contract, they could be arrested, fined, and auctioned off to work off that fine for whoever paid it. Even children weren't safe. Families could be broken apart through so-called "apprenticeships," with white employers taking custody of Black children and no say given to the parents.

I also didn't realize how much power Andrew Johnson had in shaping this outcome. He publicly blamed the planter class for the war, yet by the summer of 1865 he was personally pardoning wealthy Southerners who came asking for forgiveness. The Freedmen's Bureau, meanwhile, was trying to provide education and support using funds partly drawn from seized Confederate property, but it couldn't undo Johnson's policies on its own.

Groups like the Ku Klux Klan specifically targeted Black families who had managed to acquire land or build some kind of success, which explains a pattern of racial violence, like the Charleston massacre, that stretches far beyond this one era.

At the same time, the documentary showed something genuinely inspiring: the sheer commitment formerly enslaved people had to democracy itself. In the 1868 election, Grant ran against what the documentary called one of the most racist campaigns in U.S. history, complete with violence meant to stop Black men from voting in places like New Orleans, Georgia, and Louisiana. Despite that, every Southern state except Georgia and Louisiana voted for him. Within a decade of slavery's end, dozens of Black men were being elected to office themselves. That kind of rapid political transformation is almost unheard of in world history.

It's strange to think that some of the same tensions from this period, around race, rights, and who truly counts as an equal citizen, are still being worked out today.

Learning this made me realize Reconstruction isn't really history in the past-tense sense.

AI DISCLOSER; for this AI assisted assignment I used valued aid to do history research on my topic. After prompting the tool to do research based only on academic and other high-quality sources, I asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a script for an oral presentation of four minutes. I then asked Claude to shape the material in the form of a blog post of between 500 and 600 words. I edited the AI output for reliability. I also policed the linked sources for quality control. To the log post, I added visual elements and links to sources. I also made sure the paragraphs were short and in a personal style.

State v Man

 Sate v Man 1829 (in NC)

Case description:

State v. Mann (1829) is a North Carolina Supreme Court case involving a slave named Lydia, owned by
Elizabeth Jones but hired out for one year to a man named John Mann. During that year, Mann punished Lydia for some offense; when she tried to escape the punishment, he shot and wounded her. Mann was indicted and convicted at trial. On appeal, Judge Thomas Ruffin wrote the court's opinion, which became one of the most infamous rulings in American legal history for its stark declaration that a master's authority over a slave must be treated as absolute and beyond the reach of courts.

The Defense's Argument (Manns argument)

The jury instruction was legal error because it invented a "special property interest" that appears nowhere in statute or case law. The legislature had repeatedly shown it was willing to regulate the master-slave relationship — through travel passes, firearms restrictions, and runaway-capture rules — yet the only limit it ever placed on a master's or hirer's authority was the prohibition on killing. If lawmakers wanted to criminalize lesser harm, they could have written that law; they didn't. Since no such rule existed, the court had no authority to invent one through jury instructions — that's the legislature's job, not the court's. Mann, who held the same authority over Lydia for the year as an owner would, had no way of knowing a new standard would be applied to him after the fact. The whole system, this side argues, depends on absolute, unquestioned authority — any crack in that threatens to unravel it entirely.

My take: I find this side more persuasive. It's a straightforward separation-of-powers argument — courts shouldn't be inventing new rules mid-trial that didn't exist when the defendant acted. If the legislature wanted a different line, it had every chance to draw one.

Side Two: The Counterargument (Prosecution/State's Argument)

Lydia wasn't Mann's property — she was Elizabeth Jones's, and Mann held only a one-year lease. That distinction matters economically: a short-term lessee has every incentive to work an asset harder and preserve it less, since he has no long-term stake in her value or wellbeing. This isn't speculation — it's basic depreciation logic. 

The trial judge was economically correct to instruct the jury this way, because punishment is supposed to
be calibrated to the offense, not left totally unchecked. Jones, as true owner, has a right to sue over damage to her property — meaning the ruling isn't just about one injury, but about protecting the whole rental market for hired labor. And precedent already existed: State v. Hall recognized that while masters have power over slaves, that power has limits. Mann's treatment of Lydia went beyond ordinary punishment — he didn't just discipline her, he shot her.

The sixth value of the eight vaules of freedom.

The sixth value of the eight vaules of freedom.

The sixth value of free expression is called “Promote Tolerance” Here is a definition from The eight valus of free expression It has been argued that freedom of speech, especially through our  practice of extending protection to speech that we find hateful or personally upsetting, teaches us to become more tolerant in other aspects of life — and that a more tolerant society is a better society.

Somewhat counter-intuitive, the First Amendment protects hate speech because society learns valuable lessons from, including why it is hateful and worthy of condemnation. It’s how we spread norms about acceptable behavior.” To explain it more this value is all about that you still have your right of freedom of speech but adds that if it turns into hateful speech we can hear you out so us as a community can see other perspectives.  All of the eight value are verry valuble and help but i like this one because it help me people grow and not be stuck in their box of yes is yes and no is no but you try and go and push beyond that no point and get someone you didn't know was possible.

Out of the eight values this one stands out to me the most because I am a big believer in change and evolution and change is very beneficial not only to you as an individual but as a whole community. This value helps people grow and not only think one way is the right way, and to evolve and to branch out and to see the different way of life of different beliefs and other opinions. An example in current time would be Kanye who is a singer song writer and has become very famous over the years. 

Kanye is a great example of this value because he isn't like other celebrities who shy away from sharing their opinions about sensitive topics. Kanye has very controversial opinions and topics that he liked to share one of them being he stated "I see good things about Hitler." This statement being very controversial instead of getting punished by the government although the popularity definitely went down and he lost followers he still goes to state his opinion.This statement stated back in 2022 and is still a popular name and since then he has still had multiple different contorversal opinions that he has shared.  Kanye voiceing his opion.

The Amistad Rebellion of 1839

 The Amistad Rebellion of 1839

The Amistad case tells the story of a group of people who rose up, fought for their freedom, and ultimately
won it.

In 1839, a group of Africans were kidnapped from their homes in West Africa, in a place called Sierra Leone. They were captured by slave traders and taken across the ocean to Cuba. This was illegal, because Spain had already banned bringing new enslaved people over from Africa. But slave traders broke the law anyway.

In Cuba, two Spanish men named Jose Ruiz and Pedro Montes bought 53 of these Africans. They put them on a ship called La Amistad, which means "friendship" in Spanish. Kind of ironic, right? The plan was to take them to another part of Cuba to be sold again.

But the Africans weren't going to just accept this. One man, named Sengbe Pieh most people called him Cinque — found a way to break free from his chains. He helped free the others, and together they took over the ship. They fought back against the crew and took control.

Cinque told the two Spanish men to sail the ship back home to Africa. During the day, the Spanish men pretended to follow directions. But at night, they secretly steered the ship north instead, hoping someone

would rescue them. This went on for weeks. Finally, the ship ended up near Long Island, New York, way off course. A U.S. Navy ship found them and took everyone into custody.

Now here's where it turns into a huge court case. The Spanish government wanted the Africans sent back to Cuba as "property," to be punished or sold. But abolitionists — people who were against slavery — heard about the case and decided to help. They believed the Africans should be free, since they were kidnapped illegally in the first place.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1841. And here's a cool fact — a former President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, agreed to argue on behalf of the Africans. He was already retired from the presidency but still very involved in politics. He gave a long, passionate speech to the Supreme Court about why these people deserved to be free.

The Supreme Court agreed. They ruled that since the Africans had been kidnapped and enslaved illegally, they were not property — they were free people who had every right to defend themselves.

In 1841, the surviving Africans — about 35 of them — were finally able to sail back home to Sierra Leone.

The Amistad case is important because it showed that enslaved people could fight for their freedom and actually win in court. It also showed how divided the country already was over slavery, years before the Civil War. It's a powerful story about courage, justice, and standing up for what's right.

How the Bible supported Slavery and why.

How the Bible supported slavery.

In scripture (Gen 12:16; 24:35; Isa 14:1-2)

mentioned about slavery viewed in a positive way, and that owning a slave was seen as a normality. Abraham and Shara were going to Egypt because there was a famine when they arrived. The Egyptians praised shara for her looks and gifted with many wealthy possessions, one of them included enslaved men and women. Although this passage does not clearly state that the bible was all for slavery it still mentions slavery in a positive way saying it is a normality and a very valuable possession.

For a more direct part in the bible that refers to slavery being supported would be in (Exod 21:21). This part explains how if a slave owner abuses and hits a metal rod against their slave and their slave passes away it is the slave owner who gets punished. However if the slave owner strikes their slave and their slaves live two more days before dying then the slave owner doesn't get punished. This showed people in the late 18th and 19th century more in detail that it is ok to support slavery and that the bible supports you if you have a slave. The Bible told the people not only it is ok to have a slave but to abuse your slave until near death.

Bible Gateway

The bile is clear : God endores slavery

Courter Argument (done my Bianca Cruso)

The Bible has taught us that every human has the same equal values. What this means no one is better then anyone not matter their race, their gender, what religion they believe in, or where they have came from. the Bible teaches us one valuable lesson, we are all created in God's image. In Genesis 1:27 is says " God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him male and female He created them". 
Since everyone is created in God's image to him you skin race or religion, doesn't make you have any less value to Him.  The way slavery goes with this is idea is because it makes it seem like someone of color is any less. Slavery takes away all freedom and dignity.  In Gods every no one is better then anyone and we all deserve the same respect and freedom. In conclusion God wants everyone to be equal since he made us in his image.