Voting Rights Argumentative Essay

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At first, African Americans struggled to make any progress at all. After the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, they probably had quite a bit of hope until things like the KKK and the Black Codes brought them right back down. However, if you look at the big picture, yes, they did make very good progress. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a major turning point for the black community. Though it took many years, I believe that African Americans have come a long way.
Frederick Douglass was an African American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, and writer. He escaped from being a slave in Maryland and became a national leader of the abolitionist movement. He was known as the living counter-example to slaveholder’s arguments that slaves lacked …show more content…

Wells was born into slavery in Mississippi and as an adult, she documented hanging in the US and how it was used as a way to control or punish the blacks who competed with whites. Wells often teamed up with W. E. B. Du Bois, an American Civil Rights activist, and both used their writing to condemn the hangings. Du Bois and Wells were both founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
"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, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The Thirteenth Amendment was proposed and ratified in 1865. The passing of this “officially” abolished slavery but many will say that this was almost made a joke. Though African Americans couldn’t be slaves, they were still treated very similar to one.
What is the Ku Klux Klan? It was a group that formed in 1865 and was abbreviated to the more commonly known name of “KKK.” The KKK was a group of white supremacists who were against blacks at almost any cost. These in this group were very angered when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Running parallel with the Ku Klux Klan were that Black Codes. I mentioned earlier that many might consider the thirteenth as a joke. Well, the Black Codes are what made me start to think that way. Though the slaves were free, whites came up with the Black Codes and used them to restrict African Americans from actually being