Overcoming Slavery Research Paper
Matt Zenker
Mid-Term Exam Topic 1
Stephen Smith
27 February, 2011
Overcoming Slavery
January 1st, 1863, during the third year of the civil war, president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. This document, however, had many limitations. It did not apply to the Border States, only the states that had seceded from the union. Although the Emancipation Proclamation failed to end slavery, it succeeded in giving hope to many slaves, and it boosted the moral of the black soldiers fighting for the union.
After the civil war, a period of reconstruction occurred, where the issue of the readmittance of the confederate states back into the union was focused on. After Lincoln was assassinated, President Andrew Johnson furthered his efforts. The Fourteenth Amendment, defined national citizenship so as to include blacks, passed Congress in June 1866 and was ratified, despite rejection by most Southern …show more content…
Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Afro-American National League, and many others battled these laws tirelessly. There were no laws to protect blacks, they were lynched, whipped, and beaten on a daily basis. After an innocent colored boy named Emmett Till was murdered by two radical racist white men it send shockwaves through the nation that maybe segregation had gone too far. This instance was a butterfly effect and caused others to rebel. A woman named Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white person on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. Her rebellion led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a powerful leader in the fight for civil
Mid-Term Exam Topic 1
Stephen Smith
27 February, 2011
Overcoming Slavery
January 1st, 1863, during the third year of the civil war, president Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free”. This document, however, had many limitations. It did not apply to the Border States, only the states that had seceded from the union. Although the Emancipation Proclamation failed to end slavery, it succeeded in giving hope to many slaves, and it boosted the moral of the black soldiers fighting for the union.
After the civil war, a period of reconstruction occurred, where the issue of the readmittance of the confederate states back into the union was focused on. After Lincoln was assassinated, President Andrew Johnson furthered his efforts. The Fourteenth Amendment, defined national citizenship so as to include blacks, passed Congress in June 1866 and was ratified, despite rejection by most Southern …show more content…
Organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Afro-American National League, and many others battled these laws tirelessly. There were no laws to protect blacks, they were lynched, whipped, and beaten on a daily basis. After an innocent colored boy named Emmett Till was murdered by two radical racist white men it send shockwaves through the nation that maybe segregation had gone too far. This instance was a butterfly effect and caused others to rebel. A woman named Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white person on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. Her rebellion led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as a powerful leader in the fight for civil