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A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States of America |
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The first permanent English colony in North America was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in May of 1607. Twelve years later, in 1619, a Dutch ship sailed into the harbor at Jamestown and sold twenty African slaves to the Virginia colonists. Thus did "slavery" and "involuntary servitude," as they are referred to in the United States Constitution, come to the American South.
Negro slaves, brought in chains from their original homelands in central and southern Africa, proved useful and profitable in what was to become the southern United States. The flat farmlands, served by meandering tidewater rivers, were ideal for creating large plantations for growing cotton and other agricultural products. The African slaves provided a cheap and reliable source of agricultural and household labor for the emerging southern economy.
North of Virginia, where there were more hills and a harsher climate, the use of human slaves was not as successful. This part of the American colonies, the North, harnessed the labor of yeoman farmers and men and women working for wages. This created one of the great sectional differences of United States history - a group of southern states which relied heavily on slave labor and a group of northern states emphasizing the work and industry of free citizens.
By the time of the Declaration of Independencein 1776 there were almost half-a-million black persons in the colonies. A thriving slave trade had developed in which men, women, and children were sold, often at public auction, from one owner to another. Thomas Jefferson, a slave holder from Virginia, had included a condemnation of the human slave trade in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but his impassioned words were deleted to keep the support of the southern colonies during the Revolutionary Waragainst Great Britain.
The United States next confronted the slavery problem at the time of the drawing up of the federal Constitution at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1787. The delegates provided for the abolition of the importation of slaves 20 years after the Constitutionwas adopted, but the institution of slavery was allowed to remain. In addition, in a famous compromise, each slave was to be counted as "three-fifths" of a person for establishing how many representatives each state could have in the lower house, the House of Representatives, of the national Congress.
Throughout the early 1800s the South and the North drifted progressively further apart over the issue of allowing the institution of human slavery to continue in the United States. As the nation expanded westward across the North American continent, particularly hard political battles were fought over the issue of "slavery in the territories." Finally, after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the southern states seceded from the federal union rather than run the risk of having the U.S. Congress in Washington abolish slavery outright.
Follow the History of Slavery and Civil Rights in America step by step...
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama. There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have the right to vote...Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes... No law that we now have on the books...can insure the right to vote when local officials are determined to deny it... There is no Constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong--deadly wrong--to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States' rights or National rights. There is only the struggle for human rights.
President Lyndon B. Johnson - Introducing the Voting Rights Actto Congress, March 15, 1965
Civil Rights History Timeline
The Civil War
The Black Codes
The End of Reconstruction
The Political Party Problem
The Civil Rights Cases of 1883
"The Free White Jury That Will Never Convict"
Separate but Equal
Renationalizing the Civil Rights Issue
The Early Civil Rights Movement
Black Voters and the Democratic Party
Presidential Action for Civil Rights
The Eisenhower Administration
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Massive Resistance
The Non-Violent Movement
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Eisenhower Civil Rights Program
The Civil Rights Act of 1957
Congressional Action
Little Rock
The Civil Rights Act of 1960
Student Sit-In Demonstrations
The Kennedy Administration
A Unique Legislative Environment
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
Political Impact
The Protest at Selma
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Splintering of the Civil Rights Movement
The Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
The Housing Rights Act of 1968
School Busing
Milliken v. Bradley
A Change in the Cloture Rule
The Bakke Case
Perfecting Civil Rights Laws
The Minority Bill of Rights
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