"A Lack of Power and Belonging"

"For example, in March 1868, three years after the end of the Civil War, a North Carolina ex-slave named Peter Price walked into the local office of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency established to regulate the transition from slavery to freedom by enforcing labor contracts, adjudicating disputes, encouraging education and, at times, distributing rations. Price’s complaint was a common one. His landlord refused to turn over his share of the previous year’s crop. Price found a receptive ear in Hugo Hillebrandt, a Hungarian revolutionary who had fought with Garibaldi in Italy before joining the Union cause as a federal agent. After listening to Price’s story, Hillebrandt wrote an order demanding that the landlord turn over Price’s share of the crop.
"But when Price carried the order back to the farm, his landlord tore it into pieces, threw it on the ground, and declared that 'you might send ten thousand Yankees there and he did not intend to be governed by no such laws.' As a judge of practical power, the landlord was right. Hillebrandt could not enforce his orders outside of his office. In desperation, Price asked for help up the bureaucratic ladder, but without success. Some people—like Hillebrandt–would help him but could not; others perhaps could have but didn’t."

Gregory P. Downs and James Downs at The New York Times question the meaning of freedom after the Civil War.