At the end of the Civil War in 1865, America found itself with many problems. Two years earlier, the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves had been granted. This was seen as a great step in history as it offered the opportunity for a new life for black Americans, but it wasn't that simple and had many consequences. Although “Lincoln came to view the Proclamation as the only alternative left by God before emancipation was completely swept away”1, but freedom, as we know it, did not exist for black Americans for long afterward. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Indeed, racism has increased and black lives have been put in danger. Once freed in 1865, the slaves were lost. They could stay in the South, where racism had not improved, it had only worsened as white Americans still considered them slaves and not equals. They could travel north where their life would be slightly better, with less racism, but starting a new life there would also be difficult. As the ghettos were, they were the only option to live: a scary place for children but a growing community. Just as Black Americans began to see a positive impact on their lives, Jim Crow laws were passed mandating racial segregation throughout the Southern states. These laws contradicted the 15th Amendment – ​​which gave every black man the right to vote – and not even this constitutional right was able to prevent South American states from effectively removing the right to vote from blacks. Between 1871 and 1965 there were many freedom fighters who supported the cause of blacks. America, including key individuals like Rosa Parks – who demonstrated how courageous she was by ignoring the law, which led to a mass movement involving hundreds of other black Americans wanting change that led to desegregation on buses; and groups like the NAACP, CORE, and SCLC that marched in nonviolent protest, and some organizations even assigned predominantly white, middle-class members. Is the birthplace of black Americans really a land of freedom for them? To help discuss this point and to draw a conclusion, the focus of this work will be on three topics: education, freedom and legislative rights. Freedom: Slaves were given freedom in two pieces of legislation. The first, on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation giving freedom to slaves in the American South and; the second in 1965 when freedom was extended to all black Americans with the 13th Amendment. Freedom can be defined as “the power or right to act, speak or think as one wishes”. But clearly this definition does not apply to black Americans in the period from 1871 to 1965, as “The struggle for equality advocated that abolitionists remain active and militant after emancipation to lead a crusade for equal rights”2. By freeing the slaves, further laws quickly developed, but not in favor of black Americans. Between 1887 and 1891 Jim Crow segregation laws developed rapidly. These laws resulted in Black Americans having separate services including hospitals, schools, restaurants, and public places. For example, in Georgia black and white Americans had their own parks, Louisiana had separate medical facilities, and in Alabama blacks had separate bathrooms in their workplaces. There was segregation in jobs with whites being skilled and better paid and blacks being unskilled and well paidinferior. paid. Eight American states had introduced formal segregation between blacks and whites on trains, in waiting rooms and in bathrooms. The rules were also extended to schools and the ban on marriage between two different races. The effect of these laws limited Black Americans from doing many things that would have allowed them to live normal lives – in effect, it meant that opportunities were being taken away. In 1896 the Supreme Court passed a law that would shape race relations in America for the next 60 years. In 1892 Homer Plessy, a black American from New Orleans, Louisiana, refused to leave a whites-only seat. Plessy's case ended up in court, and his main argument was that his rights had been violated and that Jim Crow laws were against the Constitution. Plessy lost the case and the Supreme Court ruled that it was acceptable to segregate blacks and whites if the facilities provided were equal. This landmark decision was known as “separate but equal”: the ruling said: “laws keeping races separate do not mean that one race is better or worse than another.” The result for black Americans was a life full of contradictions. In Plessy's defense he stated that "the Fourteenth Amendment could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to strengthen society...or a mingling of the two races on terms unsatisfactory to both." Although Plessy lost the case, his actions helped with the creation of the NAACP, and the NAACP incorporated Plessy's 14th Amendment arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 in the case Brow v. Board of Education, which struck down “separate but equal” laws. Supporting Plessy's actions, historian Michael J. Klarman, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of four books on civil rights, argues that: “There is no direct evidence that Plessy led to an expansion of segregation. ”From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Fight for Racial Equality. This means that, on the contrary, he at least began to slow down and change people's opinions. Black Americans live according to the laws passed and try to get on with their daily lives. However, Southern white groups wanted to prevent them from doing so. According to a study by Toinay and Beck, approximately 2,805 people were killed during lynchings between 1882 and 1930, of which approximately 2,500 were Black Americans. In response, construction of the NAACP began in the early 1900s. This group formed in 1909 partly in response to the Springfield Riots, where two black men were held in the Springfield Jail for allegedly shouting at whites. This prompted a white mob to burn 40 homes in Springfield's black district and murder two black Americans. . The NAACP was an influential group as it included black and white Americans, some of whom were Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, W. E. B Du Bois, and Ida Wells-Barnett. Once formed, the NAACP began lobbying to increase the freedom of black Americans. Just a year after its formation, the state of Oklahoma passed a constitutional amendment allowing people whose grandparents were eligible to vote to register without passing a literacy test. This was approved with the help of the NAACP. While some of the NAACP's battles were not won, such as when they called for a boycott of the film Birth of a Nation which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in a positive light, it still helped raise the profile of this new group. The wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 gave Black Americans a catalyst in providing a sense of freedom by connecting them to their country and fellow white Americans, aligned under a common cause.Approximately 350,000 black Americans served in World War I, and this experience expanded their possibilities on the issue of a sense of freedom and racial equality. Black Americans saw this as an opportunity to win the respect of white Americans. From being involved in the world wars, black Americans believed that their lives had changed from an equality standpoint as by fighting in a war to protect their country they believed they would gain more respect from white Americans. In reality, the situation has not changed, as Morris stated: “After the world wars, black Americans expected the government to bring democracy to Harlem and Montgomery of America” … “It never happened, and blacks have began to understand the nature of the society they were up against." (The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, Aldon D. Morris). Legislative Rights: Although Black Americans were imprisoned as slaves, they had no rights. However, once they were freed, they thought things would change. The brutalities and humiliations of slave life had disappeared from their lives, but their place was taken by the denial of education, marriage, and homeownership. After slavery, the Southern government instituted laws called Black Codes. These laws granted some legal rights to blacks, the right to marry, own property, and sue in court, however they made it illegal for blacks to serve on juries, testify for whites, or serve in state militias. Many black Americans lived in rural poverty, without education and wages, under slavery, former slaves were often forced by the necessity of their economic circumstances to rent land from former white slave owners. During Reconstruction, which lasted from 1865 to 1877, black Americans assumed the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Leading the change was the NAACP who challenged the law and achieved legal victory when the US Supreme Court ruled in Guinn v US that the contract clauses were unconstitutional. Additionally, the NAACP created an anti-lynching campaign that became a focal point for the group during its early years. Although the NAACP was unable to pass federal anti-lynching legislation, the efforts increased public awareness on the issue. It was clear that direct action had a greater effect, as argued in Origins of the Civil Rights Movement by Aldon D Morris, an African-American professor of sociology and award-winning scholar with interests that included social movements, civil rights, and social policy. inequality. He was a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan for 10 years, when he argued that: “Black NAACP organizers argued that aggressive action was necessary if blacks were to gain their full citizenship rights. “During this period seven hundred black Americans served in elected public offices, two of them were United States Senators and fourteen members of the United States House of Representatives. The Reconstruction era was not all good news however, as during this period there were plans to end segregation, but the prejudices that existed and the opinions of whites made this process much longer. In 1875, the first Civil Rights Act was passed, which outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and on public land transportation and aquatic. Slaves chose to flee to the North, as legal slavery was abolished there. However, between the first emancipation and the end of the Civil War, the slave population doubled from 1.8 million in 1827 to more than four million. in 1865. So it was difficult for slave owners andSouthern farms abandon a lifestyle where slaves worked. for them every day. A later act introduced for black Americans was the Civil Rights Act, this act ended segregation in public places and prohibited employment on the basis of race, color, and religion. The act was initially proposed by John F Kennedy, but was later approved by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson took civil rights to another level, based on what Mary L Dudziak, a leading US legal historian, president of the Society for Historians of America Foreign Relations and graduate of Yale University, believed: “Although weak on civil rights, Kennedy had made a name for himself in another area that many black voters cared about,” while: “Johnson himself, an outsider during the Kennedy presidency, would help that build by raising civil rights. ”In a sense, confirming Johnson's commitment, another act for black Americans was introduced: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. There were many reasons why the act was adopted, but one reason was because once Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, there was a march in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally attacked nonviolent protesters with dogs, clubs, fire hoses and horses, and that's when Kennedy decided to act. The law prohibited the use of literacy tests and required voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the black population had not registered to vote. Although this law was a triumph for black Americans, the law was often ignored especially in the South, and where the number of blacks was large and their vote threatened the political situation. So while this granted a sense of freedom to black Americans, it did not make it a land of the free. Education: Black Americans, since they were freed as slaves, have struggled with the provision of education. “Since public secondary schools for Southern blacks were almost nonexistent before 1895, there were indeed too few rather than too many institutions for Negro higher education. But in January 1866, Texas opened 10 day and six night schools for black children. There were 1,041 students enrolled, and six months later Texas had ninety schools. This was a great start to the education of black children. However, in 1896 a “separate but equal” term arrived that denied black children access to high-achieving white schools. In the 1920s and 1930s, the average length of time in school for black children was about four days shorter than for white children. In the 1950s there were changes in the school system. There were improvements in school buildings and facilities and equality in teachers' salaries. With the help of the NAACP, parents attempted to enroll their children in the backwater school in 1951, each was refused enrollment and their children could only attend segregated schools. . In 1954, a man named Oliver Brown's daughter had to walk six blocks to a bus stop to get to her segregated black school which was a mile away, while a white school was seven blocks from her home. On May 19, 1954, the NAACP helped Oliver file a lawsuit against the board of education. The court declared that segregation was against the law and the Constitution of the United States. The Topeka School Board and all other school boards were forced to end segregation. Many schools, however, refused to implement it, and by 1956 in six Southern states there were no black children attending schools where there were white Americans. The case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was important because..