3: The Reconstruction Era (De Facto Segregation)

 The Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the JURISDICTION thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without DUE PROCESS OF LAW ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the EQUAL PROTECTION of the laws.

According to the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law:

"The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, has generated more lawsuits than any other provision of the U.S. Constitution. Section 1 of the amendment has been the centerpiece of most of this litigation. It makes “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” citizens of the United States and citizens of the state in which they reside. This section also prohibits state governments from denying persons within their jurisdiction the privileges or immunities of U.S. citizenship, and guarantees to every such person due process and equal protection of the laws. ...

"The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to alleviate several concerns harbored by many U.S. citizens prior to its ratification. The most obvious concern related to the status of the recently freed slaves. Five years before hostilities commenced in the Civil War, the Supreme Court declared that people of African descent living in the United States were not “citizens” of the United States, but merely members of a “subordinate and inferior class of human beings” deserving no constitutional protection whatsoever (see DRED SCOTT V. SANDFORD). The Fourteenth Amendment vitiated the Supreme Court’s holding in Dred Scott by making all blacks “born or naturalized in the United States” full-fledged citizens entitled to the same constitutional rights provided for every other U.S. citizen."

Freed slaves sit amidst the ruins of Charleston, S.C.

READ the rest of the entry (it'snot long): Foureenth Amendment on Gale

READ this entry about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation provided by History.net: America's Second Declaration of Independence

READ this brief overview of the Civil War provided by CivilWar.org: Civil War Overview

BROWSE this timeline of the Civil War provided by HistoryPlace.com: Timeline of Events

WATCH this short excerpt from "Reconstruction: The Second Civil War": Movie Excerpt

SKIM this Wikipedia overview about the Fourteenth Amendment: 14th Amendment Overview

CHECK OUT this really neat page by the History Channel featuring micro-documentaries, just two or three minutes apiece, on various topics relating to the Civil War (highly recommended): History Channel micro-docs