Civil War Equality

Many people assume that the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, brought freedom and equality for African-Americans. However, that was not the case. Freedom and equality were something that African-Americans had to fight for. They struggled in poverty, constantly being denied their rights, and being discriminated against. The end of the Civil War was just the beginning of the fight, African-Americans had to unite and work hard to make America more truly democratic. The Union victory in the Civil War abolished slavery, but did not change the perceptions of white people toward African-Americans. As stated by John Newman, Congress passed the laws to secure rights for former slaves,
According to the article from International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, in a case of great importance, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that it was acceptable to have “separate but equal accommodations” for white and black people. People believed that this decision did not label any race as “inferior” claiming that if the two races were unequal, it was because of the way one of them acts. This decision supported a wave of segregation laws, often called Jim Crow laws, which Southern states adopted beginning in the 1870s. Government did not make sure whether separate facilities were of equal quality (Separate). As a result, most of the public facilities, including drinking fountains, park benches, and schools were segregated. This decision did not solve any problems and only made things worse. Because people of color were denied equal opportunities for jobs and education, they lived in poverty, and white people interpreted it as a sign of inferiority. Moreover, the separation of facilities drew a line between both races and prevented any social interactions, which were necessary to help people get rid of
Ferguson case and Jim Crow laws brought even more discrimination. According to John Newman, there were many ways African Americans were discriminated against. In the South, they were given harsher penalties than white people who convicted the same crime. Colored people were also kept out of the well paid or even factory jobs. Employers were very unwilling to hire but extremely eager to fire them. In addition, Southern states tried their best to disfranchise African Americans by constantly inventing various ways to get around the law. Most common methods used to prevent people of color from voting included poll taxes, literacy tests, and adoption of grandfather clauses (allowing a person to vote only if his grandfather had cast ballots in elections before the Reconstruction) (Newman). It is obvious that all of those measures were targeting African Americans because most of them were poor, illiterate, and did not have grandparents who were able to vote before Reconstruction because their grandparents were slaves. In the book The Secret Life of Bees written by Sue Monk Kidd, the main character, a white fourteen-year-old girl named Lily, overhears a conversation between her dad and one of the deacons of her church. The adults are talking about black people registering to vote when Lily hears a deacon say: “Don’t you worry, they’re gonna make ‘em write their names in perfect cursive and refuse them a card if they forget so much as to dot an i or