Civil Rights Dbq

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After the Civil war, racial prejudice was substantial in the U.S. In 1850, 14 percent, or 4 and a half million people were African American. Of the number of African Americans, only 476,000 were free. Many people assume that because the Northern states favored the abolition of slavery prior to the Civil war, that free blacks actually had social, economic and political rights. However, these documents will justify that blacks had seldom to no rights at all in the 1850s through 1860s. In my opinion, blacks didn’t have any political freedom at all. According to Document A, most blacks in the North were restricted from voting rights. There was only one state in the U.S. (Massachusetts) in 1860 that actually allowed black voting and also to be a

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