In Tera W. Hunter’s “To Joy My Freedom,” Hunter discusses the lives of southern black women once the civil war ended. After the civil war, many black women were able to create new identities for themselves, as it related to their freedom. They were now able to pursue a new life and not have to worry about the reparations that came with their freedom. However, many black women realized that life after the civil war didn’t give them the life they dreamed for. Instead, black labor made them resemble the lives they lived when they were enslaved. The struggle of resisting systematic oppression points out how black women in the south had to fight for their dignity. Constantly being looked down upon, black women were still being seen as inferior,