African Americans Equality

The African American Struggle for Equality Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you will be able to: Identify key events in the history of African American civil rights Explain how the courts, Congress, and the executive branch supported the civil rights movement Describe the role of grassroots efforts in the civil rights movement Many groups in U. Their fight for freedom and equality provided the legal and moral foundation for others who sought recognition of their equality later on.

Political support for abolition was very much a minority stance at the time, although after the Revolution many of the northern states did African Americans Equality slavery for a variety of reasons.

Many opponents of slavery were willing to accept the institution if it remained largely confined to the South but did not want it to spread westward. They feared the expansion of slavery would lead to the political dominance of the South over the North and would deprive small farmers in the newly acquired western territories who could not afford slaves. Sandford, [4] decided in Scott, who had been born into slavery but had spent time in free states and territories, argued that his African Americans Equality residence in a territory where slavery had been banned by the federal government had made him a free man.

The Supreme Court rejected his argument. Thus, Scott lacked the standing to even appear before the court.

The African American Struggle for Equality

The Court also held that Congress lacked the power to decide whether slavery would be permitted in a territory that had been acquired after the Constitution was ratified, in effect prohibiting the federal government from passing any laws that would limit the expansion of slavery into any part of the West. Foremost among the rights claimed by the southern states was the right to decide whether their residents would be allowed to own slaves. The first step was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, African Americans Equality Slaves in states that had remained within the Union, such as Maryland and Delaware, and in parts of the Confederacy that were already occupied by the Union army, were not set free.

Although slaves in states in rebellion were technically freed, because Union troops controlled relatively small portions of these states at African Americans Equality time, it was impossible to ensure that enslaved people were freed in reality and not simply on paper.

Despite popular belief, the Emancipation Proclamation b actually freed very few slaves, though it did change the meaning of the war. Reconstruction At the end of the Civil War, the South entered a period called Reconstruction — during which state governments were reorganized before the rebellious states were allowed to be here to the Union.

As part of this process, African Americans Equality Republican Party pushed for a permanent end to slavery. A constitutional amendment to this effect was passed by the House of Representatives in Januaryafter having already been approved by the Senate in Apriland it was ratified in African Americans Equality as the Thirteenth Amendment.

The changes wrought by the Fourteenth Amendment were more extensive. In addition to introducing the equal protection clause to the Constitution, this amendment also extended the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the states, required the states to respect the privileges or immunities of all citizens, and, for the first time, defined citizenship at the national and state levels.

People could no longer be excluded from citizenship based solely on their race.

Slavery and the Civil War

Although some of these provisions were rendered mostly toothless by the courts or the lack of political action to enforce them, others were pivotal in the expansion of civil rights. Thus, while states could not deny African African Americans Equality men the right to vote on the basis of race, they could deny it to women on the basis of sex or to people who could not prove they were literate. Although the immediate effect of these provisions was quite profound, over time the Republicans in Congress gradually lost Reducing Recidivism Within The Correctional System in pursuing Reconstruction policies, and the Reconstruction ended with the end of military rule in the South and the withdrawal of the Union army in Source tests, which had been used in the North since the s to disqualify naturalized European immigrants from voting, called on the prospective voter to demonstrate his and later her ability to read a particular passage of text.

However, since voter registration officials had discretion to decide what text the voter was to read, they could give easy passages to voters they wanted to register typically whites and more difficult passages to those whose registration they wanted to deny typically blacks.

Understanding tests required the African Americans Equality voter to explain the meaning of a particular passage of text, often a provision of the U. Constitution, or answer a series of questions related to citizenship.

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Again, since the official examining the prospective voter could decide which passage or questions to choose, the difficulty African Americans Equality the test might vary dramatically between white and black applicants. Although schools for blacks had existed in some places, southern states had made it largely illegal to teach slaves to read and write. At the beginning of the Civil War, only 5 percent of blacks could read and write, and most of them lived in the North. In some states, poorer, less literate white voters click here being disenfranchised by the literacy and understanding tests.

Some states introduced a loophole, known as the grandfather clause, to allow less literate whites to vote.]