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Background reading · Social Sciences

Free but not equal: from slavery's end to Jim Crow

Slavery ended in the United States in 1865, but for almost a hundred years unfair laws kept Black Americans apart and stopped many from voting.

In 1865, after a long civil war, the United States changed its Constitution. The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal. About four million people who had been enslaved were now free. But freedom on paper was not the same as fair treatment.

What were Jim Crow laws?

Over the next thirty years, many southern states passed laws to keep Black and white people apart. People called them Jim Crow laws. They controlled almost every part of daily life.

  • Segregation: keeping people apart by race. Black and white children went to different schools, and buses, cafés, parks and even drinking fountains were split.
  • 'Separate but equal': a 1896 Supreme Court decision said segregation was allowed if things were equal. In real life, schools and services for Black people usually got far less money.
  • Voting barriers: tricks like poll taxes (paying to vote) and unfair reading tests stopped most Black adults in the South from voting, even though the law said they could.

    • Fighting back through the courts

    The NAACP, an organisation started in 1909, used lawyers to challenge unfair laws. Their biggest case was about a young girl called Linda Brown in Topeka, Kansas, who had to travel much further to a Black school than to the white school near her home.

    In 1954, in Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court decided that separate schools could never be equal. School segregation was now against the Constitution.

    A law is not the end of the story

    Many states refused to obey. Some schools stayed segregated for years. It took the courage of students, families and thousands of ordinary people to turn the court's words into real change. That is the story of the Civil Rights Movement.

    Sources and further reading

    Written for Kōkiri Learn students in our own words. Check facts against the sources.

    Used in: Standing Up: Civil Rights and Youth Voice