How did the southern states deny equality to African Americans even after Emancipation
How did the southern states deny equality to African Americans even after the Emancipation Proclamation? (30 Marks)
The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1st 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. This was not a law passed by Congress which evidently highlights how its credibility would be hindered in the coming years by all those pro-slavery. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in ten of the eleven states then in rebellion. The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all the rest freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not itself outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves/ freedmen, American citizens. This in itself highlights how even after Emancipation, African-Americans were in no way considered to be on equal-footing to their White American counterparts.
The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution (1865) confirmed the illegality of slavery and was to be seen to reconcile the proclamation which Republicans thought may have been viewed as a temporary war measure. Andrew Johnson succeeded Lincoln after his assassination and made it compulsory for confederate states to agree to the ratification of the thirteenth amendment in order to receive amnesty, a pardon and a place back in the union. However in practice Johnson failed to enforce this requirement. In addition to this Black Codes were introduced by state legislature which intended to limit or avoid the extension of voting rights to freed slaves. The codes also withheld African Americans the right serve on a jury, give evidence against a white person, carry arms and marry a white person, all of which demonstrate the denial of equality to African American’s by the southern states.
The Republicans in congress counteracted the Black Codes with the 14th Amendment to the constitution which granted all citizens protection of the law without discrimination (however only one southern state ratified this amendment – Tennessee). Despite this in practise the Fourteenth Amendment was never adhered to or enforced in the way it was intended to be. Instead the southern states found loopholes and were able to deny African Americans of their social equality through various state legislations. The amendment became practically ineffective as proven by the ‘slaughter house’ decision of 1873, which demonstrated that one’s civil rights may be protected in a national capacity, but this however did not constitute to the rights being protected by the state as state citizenship granted rights were different. This idea was then reinforced and settled with the 1896 Plessey Vs. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling which meant upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of ‘Separate but Equal’. The 14th amendment proved futile in the protection of rights against a racist state authority, which was highlighted when the Jim Crow laws were ratified in southern states, segregating all aspects of life from education, to public services to transport as a result of the Plessey vs. Ferguson case, marking the end of the reconstruction period.