Although not the only cause of the civil war, slavery played a significant part in the tensions between the Northern and Southern states, and was certainly one of the most important factors behind the conflict. As a result, after the end of the Civil war, the Southern states were required to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a condition of their readmission to the Union. This amendment stated simply that slavery was banned throughout the U.S., theoretically freeing slaves. However, that was the extent of its provisions. Therefore, in response to the Thirteenth Amendment, Southern states passed laws that greatly restricted the newly freed slaves. Officially known as Black Codes, these laws denied the majority of legal rights enjoyed by free …show more content…
Although this was vetoed at first by President Andrew Johnson, Congress managed to override the veto by passing a 2/3rds majority in both houses, and the act went into effect. In addition, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed simultaneously, which also guaranteed citizenship to freed slaves. Furthermore, this important amendment protected many individual liberties by prohibiting states from depriving “any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law”, as well as“the privileges and immunities of citizenship”. Most importantly in the progression of the movement for African American civil rights, however, was the equal protection clause. This clause, found at the end of section 1 of the fourteenth amendment, reads “[No state shall] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”. This clause would be important in future cases for civil rights, including Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of …show more content…
Even more detrimental to the movement for equal rights was the Civil Rights Cases of 1833, a series of 5 cases in which the Supreme Court determined that private discrimination could not be prohibited, only state discrimination. Finally, Southern states devised a variety of ways to bypass the Fifteenth Amendment in order to prohibited blacks from voting. Although not specifically targeting African Americans, and therefore not unconstitutional at first glance, these requirements all made it nearly impossible for blacks to vote.There were three primary ways in which this was accomplished, the first of which was poll taxes. These were small taxes required to be paid by voters before casting votes, and often suspiciously coincided with times in which poor African Americans had the least amount of money on them. Secondly, by requiring a certain amount of property to be owned before a ballot could be cast, southern states further lowered the amount of African American voters, who were often too poor to own property. Finally, literacy or understanding tests were administered in order to determine voter