Civil Rights Outline

Outline

Civil Rights: The Changes That Happened, The Changes That Didn’t, and Those

That Did Their Best to Prevent Them From Happening.

A. The struggle for equality has been a battle fought for hundreds of years.

Documents such as The Declaration of Independence, dating back to 1776,

state that all men are created equal, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the

pursuit of happiness.

B. Surely we know that in fact all men were not seen as equal because issues such as

slavery and white superiority existed as well as discrimination issues that still

exist to some extent today.

C. In 1865, The 13th Amendment was established which abolished slavery, but did

not grant blacks equality.

D. Government was still extremely biased when meeting to make Amendments.

They were quoted as saying “We hold this to be a government of white

people…to benefit white people…and no Africans can be a U.S. citizen…”

E. Even though slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment, issues such as

Black Codes and the struggles of the Freedmens Bureau were definitely

present and burning strong.

F. Inequality was demonstrated when the Freedmens Bureau granted all freed slaves

40 acres of land and a mule. Our President at this time, Andrew Johnson,

strongly disagreed with the Freedmens Bureau and felt that the freedmen did

not deserve the land they were given, so he took it back.

G. Violence became a way of dealing with the civil rights issues. Blacks were

lynched daily and 1000 were killed in the state of Texas alone for various

crimes in which they were not allowed to defend themselves in a court of law.

H. Johnson believed he had restored the Union but Congress disagreed and began to

realize that those who were once slave owners were now in power of the “new

and reformed” states and little change has occurred. This lead to Congress

constructing the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, which gave citizen ship to all born in

the U.S.

I. Johnson disagreed with the Civil Rights Bill and vetoed it, but he was later

overroad by a Congressional decision which was the first time in history that

this has happened.

J. The 14th Amendment