United States' Racial Issues and Past

United States' Racial Issues and Past

Introduction

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln became the President of the United States of

America. He was from the North, and so the Southern slave owners were

afraid to lose their slaves. Because of this they separated from the

USA to become the Confederate States. This sparked off a war between

the two ends of America, the North and South, it was called the

American Civil War. Eventually in 1865 Lincoln passed laws and his

Proclamation of Emancipation. This promised freedom to all of the

slaves in the Southern States. Black slaves were also allowed to fight

for the Northern army.

Now blacks were set free they had a whole load of possible

opportunities, but this new freedom that they had received had just

turned out to be a different form of slavery. Some of the things that

they gained were; land - it was known as share cropping, and all of

the freed slaves were able to keep the crops they grew. There were

schools made for blacks - these were set up by the Freedman’s Bureau

who set up 4000 schools, however, it was shut at a later year but 21%

of freed slaves could now read and write. As part of their freedom

blacks could also marry, they could worship freely and black men were

allowed to vote.

The Slavery Within Their Freedom

As blacks were given this amount of freedom the Southern States

‘hated’ it. They had hatred towards the blacks because of the rights

they were receiving. The Southerners actually found ways of going into

action because of what was happening, and they decided not to fund the

schools which forced them to be shut down. As well as this they were

burnt down and the pu...

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...nally got the freedom

that they were long overdue. After 100 years of actually being given

their freedom to then actually getting their freedom. So the 12 years

of a false dawn from 1865 to 1877, which was the reconstruction after

the Civil War, was then extended up to 1965 where blacks finally got

their freedom guaranteed on paper by President Johnson. He passed the

Voting Rights Act ‘which enforced civil rights and guaranteed voting

rights for African Americans’.

Today people in parts of the USA are still being racially attacked and

killed by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and this is after all that

has happened since slavery first took place. The racial abuse would be

very bad today if we didn’t have non-violent protestors like Martin L.

King and Malcolm X who changed the ways of the Black American

community.