The Civil Rights Movement

It has taken many years for African-Americans to gain equality that was rightfully given to them in the US Constitution and they have overcome many obstacles. I will start my summary after The American Civil War ended(with a little about the civil war) and will end in the late nineteen-sixties because that was the high-point of the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil War was the war between The Confederacy which were the southern-eastern states and The Union which were the northern-eastern states; there was also the border states, the border states were the five states that were between the North and the South they also had soldiers join The Confederacy and The Union. The Union won after four years of war and 620,000 casualties.

After The Civil War between 1865 and 1870 three new amendments were added into the US Constitution, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are known as The Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and forbids involuntary servitude. The fourteenth amendment gives Americans equal rights and make it so that a state cannot take away an Americans "life, liberty, or property". The Fifteenth Amendment is that no state can take away someone's right to vote no matter their race, color or if they were a slave. From 1865 to 1887 was the Reconstruction Period was when America was putting itself back together after The Civil War. It was also when the northern states enforced the three new amendments. During the Reconstruction, the South made black codes that wasn't very different from before The Civil War, for example African-Americans had to have work contracts and if you ran away from work you will be a "fugitive or labor" and a "negro catchers" would be paid five dollars to bring you back, also your years pay would be taken away if this happened which wasn't very much to begin with. Troops (and some abolitionists) were sent to stop the black codes. After the troops withdrew from 1887. After that the South still had many problems and blamed most of them on the blacks. The Redeemers also put poll taxes and counted votes incorrectly to make African Americans powerless and it denied them the rights given to by the US Constitution

The US Supreme Court made a decision in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson was as long as something is "separate but equal" it's okay by law(legal) and now there was an excuse for keeping the races separated and White Americans superior . After this the southern states did not hold back in how much the segregated the races. They made the Jim Crow laws, the Jim Crow Laws were laws that favored White Americans and left the minority races at a disadvantage, usually money and educationally wise. The races were segregated in many places and ways, such as schools, restrooms, drinking fountains,at work, in neighborhoods, hospitals, stores and public transportation. For about a hundred or so years Jim Crow Laws were practiced throughout the South until around the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. These years were the peak of the Civil Rights Movement.

The Civil Rights Movement is when Civil Right activists fought for equal rights among the races. During the peak of the Civil Rights Movement activists worked hard to make and prove that all races were equal and none was inferior. "Brown v. Board of Education" was in 1954, it was the case in which the US Supreme Court declared that ''separate was not equal'' and the integration of public schools in the nation. The Little Rock Board of Education were the first to obey the order and were to integrate Central High school in Little Rock, AK in 1957. There was a rough start with the nine students and the citizens of little were not too quick to agree with the law as hoped, the Little Rock Nine(that is what the first nine African-American students were nicknamed) even had an armed escort follow them from class to class. There were also sit-ins, sit-ins are when someone sits somewhere as a way to protest. One famous sit-in was when four college students sat at a segregated Woolworth store's counter to protest Woolworth's all white policy. The Freedom Riders were people wanted to desegregate buses, bus terminals including the restrooms and fountains in them. They would travel across the South and have white activists in the back of the bus and black activists in the front of they would sit next to each other. This is not all that that happened in The Civil Rights Movement but its what led to it and what led to it and some things that were a part the the movement.