The easy answer to “was America the land of freedom from 1898-1960” is it’s complicated. There were many examples of how there was a lack of freedom for certain people in the country, and abroad, due to America’s policies. For example, although equality for African-American’s got better at the time, it certainly wasn’t at the same level as most white people. On top of that, communists were hunted down, and often executed. The problem was that it’s difficult to prove that someone is a communist, so most of the time non-US citizens were used as scapegoats for the rise of communism. Some of America’s actions abroad in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, for example, didn’t allow for freedom and independence for those countries. At the same time, there’s a reason that so many immigrants flooded into the country. America was a land of opportunity for most people around the world, because while it wasn’t perfect, it had more freedom than the countries these people were immigrating from. For the most part, the American Dream was feasible, and an opportunity for many. This highlighted the economic freedom that most Americans had up until the Great Depression. In most times in our country’s history I would easily say that America was the land of freedom. However, due to world-wide conflicts such as World Wars I and II, as well as The Great Depression, there wasn’t as much freedom as there usually would be. Men were forced to serve in the military through drafts, and families were forced to contribute money in the form of social security.