The Slave Ship by J. M. W. Turner

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND EMANCIPATION•In 1863, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which promised freedom to slaves in the Southern States if the Union won the war

•The 13th amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, outlawed slavery in the United States.

•The Civil Rights Act of 1866 made African-Americans full U.S. Citizens

RECONSTRUCTIONReconstruction – a period of time after the Civil War that Northern troops continued to occupy the South in order to help the South recover from the war (and also keep an eye on them)During Reconstruction, many African-Americans began to receive more of their civil liberties5 all-black colleges are founded in 1867, the first African-American state governor (of Louisiana) is elected to the House of Representatives (his election, of course, is disputed).1870 – 15th Amendment gives African-Americans the right to voteBut also during this time, the KKK is founded in Tennessee (1867) and many white people are angered about the increasing rights of black people.

JIM CROW, DISENFRANCHISEMENT, AND SETBACKS

There was so much violence directed at African-Americans that the US government began to take back its pledge of constitution protection for freedmen and women.When President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew Union troops from the South in 1877, southerners rushed to reverse the advances of Reconstruction.They used violence, fraud, and intimidation to reduce black voting and regain control of legislatures.The Tennessee government first passed a Poll Tax – everyone had to pay a certain amount of money to vote, and African-Americans (and poor whites) couldn’t afford it. Other governments began to require a literacy and “understanding” test of portions of the Constitution

DISENFRANCHISEMENT

White pollsters ran the test and “decided” if the African-American voters’ reading and interpretation of the Constitution was good enough and then determined whether or not they could vote.

Plessy v. Ferguson – landmark Supreme Court decision decides that racial segregation is constitutional, as long as the facilities offered to African-Americans are ‘separate but equal”

CIVIL RIGHTS

In response to these and other setbacks, in the summer of 1905, W. E. B. Du Bois and 28 other prominent African America produced a manifesto calling for the end of racial discrimination and full civil liberties for African Americans and recognition

This group later became the bases for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Under the leadership of Du Bois, the NAACP began to mount legal challenges to segregation

THE GREAT MIGRATION

Between 1915-1970–-over 5 million African Americans relocated from the South to northern cities, the West, and the Midwest hoping to escape political discrimination, hatred, violence and looking for greater equality.

This process of resettlement amounted the largest mass movement in American history

In the 1920s, the concentration of African Americans in New York led to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance

1920S – THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

The largest number of African-Americans migrated to New York City and Chicago.

New York City became black America’s cultural center by the 1920s.

Harlem and upper Manhattan was home to the artists, writers, and jazz musicians who made up a cultural movement called the Harlem Renaissance