How Far Were the Federal Government and the Supreme Court Responsible for the Changing Status of African American in the Years 1945-1968?

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The Bill of Rights (1791) sets out the freedoms that all American citizens should enjoy. This however did not mean every person living in the USA. There was a long history of slavery in America. Slavery was the foundation of the civil war between the South (slave states) and the North (free states) of America. President Lincoln, led the northern states, declared freedom for all slaves in his 1862 Emancipation Proclamation. Following the North’s victory in 1865, slavery was finally ended throughout America. By the 19th century, slavery had been abolished throughout America’s northern state. However it continued across the south. As America had a Federal system of government it was possible for laws to differ significantly between states as each state had its own government. The Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution, made slavery illegal, the 25 years after the civil war were efforts were made to make America a fairer society and to rebuild the southern states. This period was known as Reconstruction. In this period, two additional constitutional amendments were delivered in an attempt to give African Americas the rights they had been denied for so long. The fourteenth Amendment (1868) gave citizenship rights to all people bon in the USA and was an attempt to assure the rights of previous slaves. Furthermore the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) gave all citizens voting rights regardless of their race. However these rights were never fully enforced, although progress was made toward racial inequality, even in the south. Between 1890 and 1910, southern states introduced legal segregation which was achieved by passing local laws which denied black Americans from using the same facilities e.g. educational, health care, cinemas, etc. as white Americans. These laws were known as the ‘Jim Crow’ laws. Black people were very unhappy with the way the South was and many were

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