Throughout the history of the United States, African Americans have never had an easy time. The Civil War was a watershed moment in African-American history. It was a four year period that separated of slaveholding from the period of constitutionally-granted freedom in the United States. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court declared in 1857, that a black man had “no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” (Civil War Trust)
Less than ten years after the Civil War ended, the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution; finally putting an end to slavery once and for all and ensuring citizenship with all the rights and responsibilities it grants to everyone born in the United States regardless of their race.
African Americans were granted their freedom from slavery in 1865; four years after the end of the Civil War. The Civil War may have started as a struggle to preserve the Union, but it ended as a war of emancipation without an equal in America’s history for its moral scope.
When the Emancipation Proclamation was made, there were many voices of black men growing louder to be represented and fight in the Union ranks. On May 22, 1863, there was a War Department General Order issued, stating the creation of the United States Colored Troops. With this creation, thousands of African Americans volunteered to fight on behalf of their country and for their race.
On May 17 1954, the Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in the fight for Civil Rights. The case was the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court made this decision, it paved the way for a large amount of desegregation. This decision overturned a ruling made in 1896, Plessy v Ferguson, which accepted separate but equal segregation of the races; stating that...