Emancipation Proclamation

In 1860, there were approximately four million slaves in the United States. By 1865, there were no slaves because they had all been given freedom. Their freedom came from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation emancipated all slaves in the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation, which was made in 1863, made slavery illegal or not legal. This was a very risky decision, which means that it was a decision that could have caused a lot of trouble for Abraham Lincoln. The country was being torn in two between the northern states where slavery was illegal and the southern states where there were still many slaves. In fact, Abraham Lincoln did not make the Emancipation Proclamation until the Civil War had already started.

The Emancipation Proclamation made slavery illegal in the Union (the northern states), but slavery didn’t become illegal in the Confederacy (the southern states) until it became part of the United States again after the northern states won the Civil War. Some of the southern states made slavery illegal right away, but others did it gradually. Two states, Delaware and Kentucky, did not emancipate their slaves until 1865.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was read aloud, many slaves wept with happiness. They were happy to have their freedom and to know that their children would be free. However, it would be many years before they would begin to be treated equally as white Americans. Even today there is still discrimination (or unfair treatment) against some African Americans or black Americans.

Racial Discrimination

The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal, but in reality, this isn’t really true. The United States has always struggled with racial discrimination, which means treating people differently and unfairly because of the color of their skin.

Racial discrimination is still a problem today, but it is less of a problem now than it used to be. In the early 1900s, blacks and other people who were not white couldn’t do many of the things that white people could do. For example, they were not allowed to drink out of the same drinking fountains or use the same bathrooms as white people could. They also had to go to different schools and shop in different stores. They even had to ride in the back of busses, because only white people could sit in the front.

In 1955, a black woman named Rosa Parks was very tired of all these rules and she decided to sit in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a city in the southern part of the United States. The driver ordered her to sit in the back, but she wouldn’t do it. This was an act of civil disobedience, because she was breaking the rules as a way to try to change those rules. She was arrested.

The black community in Montgomery wanted to support Rosa Parks and fight for their rights. So they began to boycott the busses in Montgomery. This means that they refused to ride in busses because they were tired of having to sit in the back. Their boycott lasted for more than one year until the laws were changed. The bus companies lost a lot of money during the boycott. Many of the busses stopped running.

Rosa Parks’ refusal or saying ‘no’ to sitting in the back of the bus became a famous story in the national news and began the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks is sometimes called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”