In 1861, a harsh conflict broke out in the United States that threatened to tear the Union apart. During the Civil War, which lasted until 1865, the nation fought over the issue of slavery, among other things.
At that time, slavery was illegal in the North. But it was legal in the South. The southern states refused to change their ideas. They left the Union to form their own alliance. That made them rebels against the government. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It gave more than 3 million enslaved people who lived in Rebel territory their freedom. The complete abolition of slavery in the U.S. came with the 13th Amendment, which was ratified in 1865. It was one of the most important acts in American history. Unfortunately, what “freedom” means depends on the world in which a person lives. After the war, many southern states passed laws limiting the rights of Black people. Why? In both the North and the South, racism—the belief that one race is superior to another—was a part of life.
The years from 1865 to 1877 are known as the Reconstruction. It was a time when Federal troops occupied the defeated South to protect Black people.
The Reconstruction Act of 1867 put all states that had left the Union under military control. There were several reasons for this. One of them was because after the war, most southern states had passed laws limiting the rights of Black people. The 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) made all Black people in the U.S. citizens. The 15th Amendment (1870) made it legal for Black men to vote. Although the South was under military control, White people opposed these changes with violence. Many Black people were threatened, whipped, and even lynched. ▶


▲ When Reconstruction began, the Ku Klux Klan started its reign of terror. Klansmen were people who wanted to keep the South the way it had been before the Civil War. They dressed in white sheets and rode around at night, frightening and attacking Black people. They whipped them and lynched them. Members of the Klan were “ordinary” citizens—business people, doctors, and even ministers. The Ku Klux Klan still exists today.

◀ In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court made an important ruling. It said that it was constitutional to have “separate but equal” facilities for White people and Black people and other minorities. Even religious groups. For many Americans—not just Black people—this was a bad decision. More than 50 years later, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “I could never adjust to the separate waiting rooms, separate eating places, separate rest rooms, partly because the separate was always unequal, and partly because the very idea of separation did something to my sense of dignity and self-respect.” During the civil rights movement, people battled the separate but equal law.
After the Civil War, Jim Crow laws kept Black and Whie people apart at lunch counters, schools, and libraries. The same was true for barbershops, theaters, pools, buses, and railroads. There were separate water fountains, bathrooms, and telephone booths. Even hospitals had separate entrances. Some hospitals did not admit Black people at all. In any way possible, these laws kept Black and White people apart. ▶



▲ Cartoon-like images of Black people were common after the Civil War. White men painted their faces black to put on shows that made fun of Black people. In an offensive song-and-dance act, the Black man was a character called Jim Crow. Later, the term “Jim Crow” came to mean racial discrimination.
Think Piece!
Can schools keep two groups of people separate and still give them an equal education?

◀ In the early 1950s in Topeka, Kansas, Linda Brown (shown sitting to the left of her sister) lived just two blocks from a White school. But she had to walk many blocks through dangerous railway yards to attend an all-Black school. Her father took the case to court. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional. So all U.S. public schools had to let in Black and White children. Many parts of the South fought the ruling. The Black children who walked past mobs of angry White people bravely carried out the Supreme Court’s decision.