13th Amendment Legalized Essay

Following the Civil War, the lives of Africans Americans were largely improved. On December 6 1865, the 13th amendment was ratified. This amendment officially abolished the practice of slavery in United State. A few months before that, on March 1865, Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau. It established many public schools that provided access for African American to receive secondary education, their vital right that had long been denied. Here, Africans American could learn how to read and write. Not only secondary education, Freedmen’s Bureau also opened colleges for African American where they could gain higher education, further aiding them to reconstruct stable life. Furthermore, on July 9 1868, the 14th amendment was ratified. This ratification

They started to pass a law, called Black Codes, which striped the rights of freed slaves. A literacy test, one example of Black Codes, was practiced to exclude African-Americans from voting. Further, the freed slaves were forced to sign a contract to work for one employer only with very low wages. If they refused, they could be arrested and work with no wages. Sharecropping was also largely practiced in the south to prevent African-American to gain economic independence. This practice gave huge advantages to the landowners and made sharecroppers, African-Americans, faced a very difficult situation. Sharecroppers often had a never-ending debt that prevent them to stop working to the landowner, depriving their right and freedom. Furthermore, Ku Klux Clan, white supremacist organization, was established to spread threat and violence to the African-American communities. They rode to people’s house, fired African-American, and burned their houses. Their main goal was to decimate as much as possible the right, liberty, and freedom of African