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Essay On The 13th Amendment

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It should be expected for everyone to be treated equally, right? Well for the past 200 years, African Americans couldn’t vouch for that expectation. Starting out with slavery, moving into segregation, and now dealing with mass incarceration, it seems that we can’t catch a break. 13th, the documentary, explains the meaning of the 13th amendment and how it says we are all free, yet we are still being held prisoner in many other aspects. Many people are going to prison for little to no crime and are getting life sentences. It’s sad that throughout history, not much has changed. The worst and best thing about all of this is that no one knows what the future holds. Hopefully, there will be opportunities to change our reality into something …show more content…

This factor contributes to the problem and ruins family lives at the same time. The film shines a light on how slavery isn’t really over, just put into another form: imprisonment. It explains how certain laws, mostly directed towards Blacks, were made, including drug usage. They put Blacks in jail to do labor for large businesses and social elitists and they only get a small amount of pay. They take fathers away from their families causing a great deal of pain for both parties. As a result, Black children, especially boys, are following their father’s footsteps and ending up incarcerated too. It’s a hard cycle to watch, but it’s happening every day in America. Since the 1970s, the number of prisoners in the world multiplied 800 times to 2,400,000 people. Meanwhile, the young black community is busy fighting and killing each other instead or helping, healing and building one another up. Black people are so capable and inspirational, but they don’t always see it in themselves to be great. It’s time to instill knowledge and motivation in the young black people so that we can conquer all feats and help this nation become a truly free

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The 13th Amendment, ratified about 157 years ago, states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” In the documentary 13th, the loophole to this American right is explored: although slavery may be illegal, discreetly targeting people of color to put them in prison is not. 13th is a powerful documentary that scrutinizes the unjust U.S. prison system, and explores the repercussions that the abolition of slavery had on people of color. I found that this documentary was engaging, yet brutally honest in the way it addresses historic discriminatory acts that have caused the incarceration rates in America to rise through the

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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.

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The “13th” is a documentary about the American system of incarceration and the economic forces behind racism in America especially in people of color. One of the claims that the author mentioned is that today incarceration is an extension of slavery. It is also mentioned that most of the time in society we are defined by race. In the documentary, we can see how African Americans are sentenced for many years since they are too poor to pay their fines or sometimes most of these people plead guilty to get out of jail fast. However, African Americans are separated from their families and also treated inhumanly in prisons just because they are of a particular race.

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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) The amendments were put into place to protect the rights and civil liberties of all American citizens from the federal government. However, prior to the fourteenth amendment, there was no certainty with the constitution. The constitution did not state in a clear enough way who was protected under it and exactly what rights you had as an American Citizen. The 14th amendment was in response to the just passed thirteenth amendment, which ended slavery in all of the southern states.

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This was my third time watching the 13th Documentary, I have watched it for my Justice Theory class, Protest Justice Law and Media class, and now Immigration Education and the Family. However, with that being said, this is still an excellent documentary and each time I watch it I learn something new and different aspects pop out to me based on what particular class I have watched it for. When it comes to this class, I focused on the nuances and who was being targeted. To begin, the documentary is in reference to the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and how it had the ability to end slavery for African Americans, however, this end of slavery led to a mass incarceration of individuals, predominantly people who are African American.

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