One factor why historians believe slavery was abolished was because of the actions of white, middle-class campaigners such as Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce. Granville Sharp was involved in many court cases, helping black people from being treated badly by their owners and he stopped them being made to go back to their home land in the West Indies. Sharp managed to get judges to agree that masters of slaves could not force a slave to go out of Britain. Sharp did not manage to get slavery or the slave trade abolished, but he had started the campaign against slavery. A black youth who was queuing for free medical help, with a badly swollen head,
Many died to hands of whites for their participation in these rebellions. Whites of the Southern states tried hard to keep slavery the way it was but with the steady growing number of free educated blacks in the Northern states grew the desire for slaves to obtain the same. In the North, blacks were able to obtain an education, work as well as own their own stores. Eventually, Abraham Lincoln got into office and many Southern Whites believed he sided on the abolishment of slavery so they made their states separate from that of the Northern portion of the United States. Lincoln supported the Union, which were the Northern States which held free blacks, and gave the Confederate States an ultimatum to join back with the Union or war will begin.
History Practice Controlled Assessment: ‘To what extent has the contribution of Martin Luther King to the advancement of black Americans between 1954 and 1968 been exaggerated?’ On 6th December 1865, the 13th amendment to the American Constitution was passes, leading to the abolition of slavery. However whilst slavery was abolished, the black people of America still faced harsh racism and had very little rights. During the period of 1954-1968, many people were campaigning for an advancement of black Americans. These people wanted equal civil rights for blacks as white Americans had. One such person was Martin Luther King.
These laws denied black Americans the equal rights of white citizens which re-imposed white supremacy and meant they remained as second-class citizens. It wasn’t only the Jim Crow laws but under the Fifteenth Amendment, black people had the legal right to vote throughout America. Nonetheless, the southern states found devious ways to disenfranchise the local black population. For example, some states introduced a grandfather clause, which meant that people could only vote if their grandfathers had been able to vote. Other states introduced literacy tests as criteria for voting.
Such a move was tactical, as voting for the Act would have placed Kennedy in a politically unfavourable position due to his reliance on support from southern senators, who were inherently racist. Voting in this way was therefore not necessarily reflective of Kennedy’s personal opinion. At this time Senator Kennedy employed a black secretary and two black attorneys as advisors, which tells us that he himself was not a racist and on a personal level seemed to encourage the employment of black people into
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.
Race Relations after the Civil War 3 The way white Southerners made it difficult on former slaves in the South was to create what was called “Black Codes”. These codes were laws made by southern states to try to ensure their way of life could not be infringed on in the wake of the passing of the 13th amendment which outlawed slavery. Examples of such codes varied from state to state. However, the message was clear to the former slaves that they were still unequal. Examples of these laws are as follows: 1.
Did Slavery Cause the Civil War? The claim of historians that the civil war in America was an outcome of slavery is true, as it was the issue of abolition of slavery that was considered not acceptable by Southern states of the country, as their major plantation and trade was there because of African slaves. According to the people of the South, North was trying to eliminate slavery with unjustified reasons. The Southerners regarded the Northerners as their enemies because, they thought that the government of North was interested in subjugating Southern States by ending slavery and by given equal rights to the slaves. There were eleven States of America that were slave states, as they held slaves in a large ratio; they named themselves as “Confederates of America” while the other side was named as “The Union” (Valley of the shadow).
The Civil War only ended the slavery, not racism. Though the Thirteenth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment were passed, they were mostly pushed by federal government. One of the most famous case in that period, Plessy v. Ferguson, involved a Louisiana law that required separate seating arrangements for the races on railroads. In the case, the petition stated that this act conflicts the Thirteenth and Fourteen Amendment which give black equality. While the court held that separate accommodations did not deprive blacks of equal rights if the accommodations were equal; in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political; legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation.
His view was very much that ‘the position of black people would improve of its own accord over time’, despite this, and perhaps through the urgency of attorney Herbert Brownell, he went on to propose two civil rights acts. The civil rights act of 1957 focused on African American voting rights, particularly knuckling down on the refusal of them. A Commission on Civil Rights was established; a six man bipartisan commission designed to monitor voting rights and investigate allegations of denial of any constitutional law. The act also empowered the attorney general to prevent such interference through federal injunctions. The result of this federal interference in state affairs saw fury in the South, with violent outbreaks and bombings against churches.