What is Freedom? If you were to ask a freedmen or freedwoman during the age of Reconstruction in 1865, the answer would be land, stability, religious liberty and education. African Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experience as slaves and observation of the free society around them1; they were eager to demonstrate their liberation from the harsh living situations, and extreme rules and regulations they were accustomed to while going through slavery. Goals were set to become farmers or/also called “Yeoman Farmers,” meaning a small independent farmer through family owned labor. A Baptist minister by the name of Garrison Frazier, who purchased the freedom of himself and his wife in 1856, was chosen to express the common sentiments upon the matters of freedmen in the State of Georgia. Frazier states that “The best way we can take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn in and till it by our labor- and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare; and to assist Government, …We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own.” 2 Like rural people throughout the world, former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to land ownership.…