The American Civil War And The Civil Rights Movement

Following the Civil War, America was in shambles. There were many groups with strong, conflicting ideas of how things should be. However, most groups had one idea in common: reducing the rights of African Americans as much as possible. Freed slaves had very little freedom under the law, were treated like a lesser species by those around them, and faced dangerous environments everywhere they went. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation may have legally freed slaves, but African Americans were barely more than paid slaves.

The Civil War was fought over the “race problem,” to determine the place of African-Americans in America. The Union won the war and freed the slaves. However, when President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, a hopeful promise for freedom from oppression and slavery for African-Americans, he refrained from announcing the decades of hardship that would follow to obtaining the new won “freedom”. Over the course of nearly a century, African-Americans would be deprived and face adversity to their rights. They faced something perhaps worse than slavery; plagued with the threat of being lynched or beat for walking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the addition of the 14th and

The American Civil War claimed the lives of over 700,000 people. The war was fought from 1861-1865. The results of the war were described as; a union victory, abolishment of slavery, territorial integrity preserved and the destruction and dissolution of the Confederate States. The twelve years that followed were called the Reconstruction Era, 1865-1877. The purpose of the Reconstruction Era was to restore National Unity, strengthen the government, and guarantee rights to freed slaves. The reality of reconstruction though was; violence (260,000 dead), newly freed slaves suffered the most, and Lincoln's hopes of trust and rededication to peace were lost when he was assassinated on April 15th, 1865. It is these realities of the Reconstruction Era and beyond that this paper will address and how those realities affected the newly freed slaves. Life in post-bellum America for African - Americans was violent and filled with fear because of white supremacy, lynching, and the brutal mutilations of blacks.

In the beginning when America was uniting and trying to form its official government the northern states and the southern states had already different greatly from each other. The North was industrializing and working on expanding west and the South was booming with farming and its famous cash crop. The North wanted to abolish slavery and the South did not. Since the North and South had so many differences and could not keep a steady compromise, heavy tensions arose between the North and the South which then caused the Southern states of America to decide to leave the American Union and create their own Southern Confederacy. This tore our nation apart. The American Civil War had begun and the very people that were once neighbors had each

African Americans have come a very long way from 1865; they have fought many battles to earn their place in America’s Society. From the ending of slavery African Americans have had various achievements from their suffering. Some fought, some spoke, some marched, some sat, some cried, some died, some even dreamed, but all of these things left a footprint in history. In this paper I will discuss some very important events in African American history beginning with the ending of slavery which has brought us to the America we all enjoy today.

According to president Franklin D. Roosevelt the future world shout be a world that people have essential human freedoms also known as the four freedoms; freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The reason of the United States took part in the World War II was to fight for human’s freedoms to liberate humanity in Europe and Asia, and to spread the American democracy to the entire world. “A revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quick –lime in the ditch” (Franklin D. Roosevelt 1941). However the war enhanced the commitment of many white Americans to maintain the existing racial order in the United States. The war also gave birth to the civil right movement. While we were fighting for the freedom of other nations there were still inequality exist in the United States. The World War II didn’t directly push forward the democracy in the United States; on the contrary it created many inequalities on non-white races during the World War II and post war that directly lead to the civil right movement. The civil right movement is a “war” that African-Americans against inequality in education, social rights, and human rights it given people the idea that the existing racial order in the united states was wrong, so the civil rights movement directly push forward the American democracy to a step forward.

In 1865, the United States government implemented what was known as Reconstruction. Its’ purpose was to remove slavery from the south, and give African-American’s the freedom in which they deserved. However, the freedom that they deserved was not the freedom that they received. With documents like The Black Codes restricting them from numerous privileges that white people had and the terroristic organization known as the Klu Klux Klan attacking and killing them, African-American’s were still being oppressed by their government as well as their fellow man. Slavery may have been abolished, but African-American’s were not yet given the freedom and rights that their white counterparts took for granted.

During reconstruction the United States was divided on social issues, presidential campaigns were won and loss on these issues during this period. The struggle for development of African Americans and how they initiated change in political, economic, educational, and social conditions to shape their future and that of the United States. (Dixon, 2000) The South’s attempts to recover from the Civil war included determining what to do with newly freed slaves and finding labor to replace them. The task of elevating the Negro from slave to citizen was the most enormous one which had ever confronted the country. Local governments implemented mechanisms of discrimination to combat citizenship

The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the United States. In the first place, it did not apply to the border states where slavery was a problem, for reason that it did not secede. Secondly, much of the territory to which the proclamation was applied to was beyond the power of the Federal government, and therefore, it could not be enforced thoroughly. Finally, even Lincoln doubted it would be held legal in peacetime. While the war lasted, most of the slaves remained loyal to their masters. But it satisfied the North who demanded antislavery mandates.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Besides, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

The Civil War left the tracks around the future years. For example, “some historians say we're still fighting over some of the same issues that fueled the Civil War” (Blake, 2011). In the present, some situations refer to some circumstances over the past “The shutdown of the federal government, war in Libya, the furor over the new health care law and Guantanamo Bay -- all have tentacles that reach back to the Civil War, historians say.” (Blake, 2011) Most of them refer to the constitution and civil rights "One of the biggest debates during the Civil War was how far should governments go in dictating our lives" (Blake, 2011). The laws can be interpreted in a different manner. The constitution should be understood in the right way for the

The conclusion of the Civil War in favor of the north was supposed to mean an end to slavery and equal rights for the former slaves. Although laws and amendments were passed to uphold this assumption, the United States Government fell short. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were proposed and passed within five years of the Civil War’s conclusion. These amendments were to create equality throughout the United States, especially in the south where slavery had been most abundant. Making equality a realization would not be an easy task. This is because many problems were not perceived before and during the war. The reunification of the country would prove to be harder than expected, and entry into a new lifestyle would be

Each generation has gone through multilevel conflicts that would come to define them in the annals of time. For example, in the fifties there was WWII and with the crystallization of the American Dream and our moral identity as a nation. Then in the sixties there was the Vietnam Conflict, Watergate and the Civil Rights Movement that began to peel away the façade. The eighties rose from the ashes of the seventies with a second attempt at a American Dream but created a Cold War and a very real wall that would fall before today with the War on Terror which eludes any comparison to the past. These conflict and consequences had a moral level that would defined what justice, morality and culture was. These fluid concepts ended up spurring real evolution in all aspects of life for each member in an increasingly global culture each generation. These evolving aspects of culture were often transgressive and therefor created unique and novel challenges for each individual who existed independently within the generation. This crisis of morality was a duty each member faced up to in a different way. Some students rebelled against their parents and grandparents moral perspectives in favor of one crafted in the molten passion of the present during the sixties. This was not an isolated incident, no freak occurrence. The seventies would see unpresented environmental revolution and an ensuing social revolution during the eighties. But going another level deeper in these moral

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on 14th April 1865 and was serving as 16th President of the United States from 1861. Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate spy, who was not happy with how the president supported the African Americans

During the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti War Movement allot of artists created their own expressions of why the war should be opposed. Much of the art, photographs and drawings were that of supporting the events that were happening during war time. Some art contained items needed and used by Americans such as guns, bombs, soldiers gear and their surrounding horrible environment. African Americans, like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party totally disapproved of the war and showed strong opposite feelings of the U.S. in Vietnam. Both white groups and black groups hated the war but each group protested during separate times and events. As with artists, their showings were in separate places. All art used during this time was