African American and Civil Rights Essay

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The struggle of African Americans
His204
Kim Branim
Dennis Neill
April 25 2013

African American had lot of struggles to get where they are today. They started out as slaves and had to fight for everything they have like freedom and being treated as equal. African American were forces to be in the United States. There fight and struggles to be treated as equal and maintain a real life. The civil rights movement is big part of their history. African American was brought over to America in 1619 in Virginia as slaves to work on farms as well as do other things. Most were sold into slavery as prisoners of war by African states of kidnaped by African, Arab, European, or American slave traders. However slavery already existed in Africa before Europe arrived. The slaves that arrived in Virginia were treated as indentured servants by English settlers and they were released after a number of years worked. This system was replaced by race-based slavery because when they let the one go they had to be replaced. Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery in 1641. A law was passed that they gave slavery to their children made imported servants salves for life, Slavery official ended in 1865 when 250,000 slaves in Texas heard the news that the war was over. The Underground Railroad was formed to help slaves escape the hard life of slavery to Canada free places in the United States. The underground was ran by Northern abolitionist which was made up of blacks was well as whites. The escaped slaves were called passengers, the homes where they were sheltered was called stations, and those who guided them conductors. Nephin said “While there never were any actual railways tunneling underground across Lancaster County and beyond, the Underground Railroad was as real as the tracks that made up the nation's early rail corridors”( Nephin, 2013) Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave that became one of the most effective and celebrated leaders of the underground railroad. In 1857the Dred Scott Decision Dred Scott was a slave whose master took him to live in a free state of Illinois after his master died he sued in court for his freedom based that hews living in a free state the Supreme Court decided that black are not U. S citizen and could never be U.S. citizens this was a hard blow for blacks. They slaves used to be bullwhipped and lots of them had scar on their backs. In 1865 on April 9th the civil war ended and on April 14 the president Lincoln was assassinated making him the first one to be killed in office. No one really knows how things might have been different for blacks if Lincoln had lived. Slavery officially ended when in Texas on June 19 when 250,000 slaves gotten news that the war had ended two months earlier. In Tennessee in May however the KKK was formed by ex-Confederates., Which in the long run caused lots of problem for blacks as well as other races. A step in the right direction the 13th Amendment to the constitution was ratified prohibiting slavery. According to Dahl “in 1865, after a bloody Civil War, the 13th Amendment finally prohibited slavery” (Dahl, 2002). The black codes were passed in the southern states which restricted the rights of newly freed slaves. They varied greatly from state to state as to their restrictiveness and harshness. The codes gave black certain civil rights like the right to marry and own property they also provided segregation of public places as well as restriction on freedman’s status as a free laborer. Some northern states had black codes before the war but they thought that this was just a way for the south to reenslave blacks the freedmen’s bureau was a federal agency that was formed to protect and aid the newly freed blacks in the south. According to the encyclopedia the freedman’s bureau was supposed to last one year a bill to make it longer was however veto by President Johnson who viewed the legislation as unwanted and
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