Slaves Gain Freedom

This is a photo that came up within a google search of “freed slaves”. I think this a good photo in the sense that in every photo we have previously seen in post African Americans faces show hardly any emotion and if they are any it looks as if they are suffering or in pain. However, in this photo you can see teeth and what seems to be the start of a smile. This picture is the closest thing that we have seen to a smile in any photograph of any slaves at this time.  Since the word “Emancipation” is written at the bottom of the photo I am assuming that is photo was to illustrate the joy in African Americans lives once they received their freedom. It shows a child with broken shackles, showing a young child excited for being freed. The shackles represent a sense of the breaking of the slavery that just ended. The man in the foreground of the picture has his hands up as if he is praising this freedom along with the women sitting next to him lifting the child up in the air.  In the background of the photo you see many people celebrating as if they have just received the news that they are free. The emancipation of slavery is the reason that all the African Americans were able to rejoice, as seen in the picture above, and finally receive the freedom that they had been fighting to receive for many years.