Freedom Lost and Freedom Won in America - The History of Struggle Between Promise Power and Equality

William Hartley

Summary

This book traces the long and unfinished struggle over freedom in the United States, revealing how liberty has been promised, contested, expanded, and constrained across generations. Moving from the nation’s founding ideals through slavery, Reconstruction, segregation, civil rights, and into the challenges of the present day, it examines how freedom has been shaped not only by law, but by power, culture, economics, and collective memory.Rather than telling a story of steady progress or inevitable decline, the book uncovers recurring cycles of advance and retrenchment. Each chapter explores how moments of reform were met with resistance, how symbolic gains often masked structural inequality, and how rights secured in theory were unevenly realized in practice. Housing, education, labor, voting, policing, media, and the courts emerge as key arenas where freedom has been negotiated and too often limited.Grounded in historical analysis and written in a clear, engaging narrative voice, the book connects past struggles to contemporary debates about democracy, justice, and belonging. It challenges the comforting myths that freedom is settled or self sustaining, showing instead that liberty requires accountability, participation, truth telling, and shared responsibility.Ultimately, this work argues that freedom in America is not a completed achievement, but an ongoing choice. It invites readers to see history not as distant record, but as a guide to the present moment, and to recognize that the future of freedom depends on whether its demands are met with honesty, courage, and sustained commitment.

Available since: 02/07/2026.

Print length: 185 pages.

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