The Adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965
The Adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 In the turn of the fifteenth century African American traveled with European explorers, especially Spanish and Portuguese to the New world many serving as crew members, servants and slaves (Bigelow, 2011). African Americans were free in the beginning times of the New World, though first white landowners faced labor crisis, what appeared easiest was to force the strong, hardworking African Americans to slavery by the mid-sixteen hundreds, second the United States Constitution in 1788 did not help, it guaranteed equality only to whites and consider blacks as three-fifths of a person (Bigelow, 2011). The end of the Civil War and the help of Abraham Lincoln, in December 1865 the Thirteen Amendment to the constitution was adopted, stating that slavery was abolished, though it was the beginning of blacks worst struggles to come (Bigelow, 2011). The following will view African-Americans lives from the adoption of the Thirteen Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 focusing how they have worked to end segregation, discrimination and isolation to gain equality and the civil rights. Technology help the New World take its shape, but many would not know that African Americans had a huge impact developing the beginning of it. In 1790 an invention that impacted this countries production of cotton was the cotton gin; invented by Eli Whitney an African American, it helped separate the cotton from the cotton seed which allowed the textile industry to grow (Trotter, 2000). This did not help the blacks they were not viewed as having technical knowledge but only as labor workers, which pushed slavery and Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1832 which outlawed blacks to read, write and cipher (Trotter, 2000). 1836 the U.S. Patent Act came to affect which required inventors to submit models showing the construction, design and specifications, which the literacy restriction denied African Americans to patent their
References: Bigelow, B. C. (2011). African Americans. Retrieved October 2, 2011, from Countries and Their
Cultures website: http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/African-Americans.html
Bowles, M. (2011). A history of the United States since 1865. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint
Education
Carreiro, A. E. (1999, Summer). Ghosts of the Harlem Renaissance: "Negrotarians" in Richard
Wright 's Native Son