Slavery of the African Americans may have the status of having been the most horrible economic relations history has ever witnessed. Still, its social consequences over the years, even after the Emancipation, have become even more daunting. Houston Hartsfield framed it even grotesquely, that “The colored people did not know how to be free, and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them.” Even in the aftermath of Emancipation, distrust, violence, and horrid conditions remained the common plight of the freedmen[1]. A lot of reconstruction work went into bridging the gaps and making race relations normal for many years with no avail. The Civil Rights Movement led by Rev. Martin Luther King in the 1960s at least made considerable progress, but among poor African American populations, discrimination and racial prejudice remain the hallmark of their American experience. In underscoring the plight of the freedmen, it is important to highlight the bleak institutional systems and the legal frameworks as well as the economic circumstances of the freedmen.   

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