Civil Rights Gains and Losses in the Late Nineteenth Century

     The Civil War, the bloodiest and costliest war to date in American history that accounts for over 600,000 American deaths; lasted for four brutal years from the time of 1861 until its conclusion in 1865. With its conclusion, former slaves were guaranteed freedom by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, and the southern states were able to begin the process of Reconstruction and once again becoming a part of the Union. The time of the 1860s marked a time in which African-Americans were first provided the opportunity to live as an individual and not subjected to work and cruelty by a cruel owner, and the eventual passings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, freedmen and all individuals born in the United States were granted full citizenship, and freedmen were able to participate in voting in official elections, respectively. With the now tarnished reputation of the former Southern officeholders in appearing as traitors by the "Bloody Shirt" campaigns, complemented with the fact that many of the Confederate states had not yet been readmitted into the Union until the 1870s, the Radical Republicans and African-Americans held the majority in making more decisions for the rights of future Americans. Acts like the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was passed, granting African-Americans the complete opportunity to reap the benefits of enjoying the same public accommodations as white citizens do, and through the twelve-year period of Reconstruction, some blacks like Hiram Revels were actually voted in some districts and states to become appointed governor or Congressman, alluding to a possible idea that blacks were on their way to achieving further equality and approaching the same levels of freedom as the whites.
     Despite the growing privileges given to black Americans, more Southern states became readmitted into the Union, and former southern politicians took back their former positions of government in hopes of curtailing the rights of the black Americans, and they advanced in ensuring their superiority by forging hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan to torture or kill innocent African-Americans. These changes and occurrences during the end of the Reconstruction era witnessed a slowing of progress in providing the freedmen and women with more rights provided in the Constitution, but further loopholes in Supreme Court cases of the 1880s and 1890s provided racism to prevail in American culture. In 1883, the Civil Rights Act was under re-examination and the court ruled by a majority that it was only legislation that was prohibited from exhibiting feelings of racism, but each person could display racist opinions if they so desired, as the court was prohibited from controlling private negotiations or thoughts. Segregationist policies known as the Jim Crow laws began to arise, predominantly in the South, and in 1896 the landmark case of Plessy v. Ferguson argued in the Supreme Court that "separate but equal" facilities in the minds of the owner or director of a particular organization was completely constitutional. Notable locations in any given city were divided among sectors pertaining to the white population and others remaining property of the African-Americans. Despite coining the phrase "separate but equal," most facilities were never resulted this way, and African-Americans possessed lower living conditions, recreational facilities, and school systems; setting them at notable disadvantages that would hinder their progress for years to come. An attempt to reestablish the old-style hierarchical system of social classes in society was in the process, and it was not until movements like the court case Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that denied the constitutionality of "separate but equal" facilities as well as public discrimination of individuals based on factors like gender, age, race, or color. In conclusion, while the Civil War was fought in the later half for the purpose of liberating the slaves to make them freedmen and freedwomen, by the time Reconstruction had concluded civil rights progress was halted for almost another century, and it was during this time in which actions taken to protect the rights of all Americans transitioned into the affair of today.