29 December 2008

“Three-Fifths of Other Persons”: A Promise Deferred

The Civil War ended slavery, but legal segregation followed in the South

Cover of Free At Last: the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

This article is excerpted from the book Free At Last: The U.S. Civil Rights Movement, published by the Bureau of International Information Programs. View the entire book (PDF, 3.6 MB).

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans and their white allies employed many strategies as they fought to end slavery and then to secure legal equality for the “freedmen.” Progress toward racial equality was destined to be slow, not least because slavery and oppression of blacks were among the sectional political compromises that undergirded national unity. The Civil War of 1861-1865 would end slavery in the United States, but once the conflict ended, northern political will to overcome white southern resistance to racial equality gradually ebbed. The imposition of the “Jim Crow” system of legal segregation throughout the South stifled black political progress. Nevertheless, African-American leaders continued to build the intellectual and institutional capital that would nourish the successful civil rights movements of the mid- to late 20th century.