Plessy Vs Ferguson

To say that no one was prepared for the results of emancipation would be an understatement. It would seem to be that the emancipation of African Americans from slavery would be a good thing, and it was. Under the 14th Amendment, all people born or naturalized in the United States are defined as citizens, making former slaves citizens. The 15th Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition”, granting voting rights to African American men. The Freedmen’s Bureau was founded in 1865 to assist African American ill-prepared for their lives as freed people and did such activities as set up schools and settle freedmen onto public lands. However, white Southerners were not yet ready to relinquish …show more content…
Ferguson in which the Supreme Court rules that segregation is legal as long as it is equal (“separate but equal”). This gave the legal basis for Jim Crow laws in which they did indeed separate races in areas such as schools, hospitals, and transportation, but in no way made accommodations equal. While the 15th Amendment did give the right to vote to African American men, those voting rights were effectively stripped away through both laws and intimidation. Poll taxes, property and literacy requirements, and grandfather clauses all barred African American men from voting. Black Codes also denied basic rights to African Americans, such as those in Mississippi, which included such things as no marriage between races and if an African American broke a contract for a job and left, they could be captured and brought back to their employer, forfeiting all wages (The New York Times, Black Codes of Mississippi (1865), p. 4). The founding of the Ku Klux Klan, whose goal and purpose was to perpetuate white supremacy and protect white women, contributed enormously to the terrorization of African Americans in the