The African-American Freedom Trail: From Slavery to Freedom in New York City

Remembering life before the boat makes me incapable of forgetting life after the boat.

But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it...
The whites came to this land for a fresh start and to escape the tyranny of their masters, just as the Freeman had fled theirs. But the ideals they held up for themselves, they denied others. Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but created equal was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if all men did not truly mean all men. Not if they snatched away what belonged to other people, whether it was something you could hold in your hand, like dirt, or something you could not, like freedom.

There are more African-American men with suspended licenses than valid licenses,

To black America, this is just another example of the judicial system trying to railroad an African-American male.

No place epitomizes the American experience and the American spirit more than New York City.