Timothy Nelson
History 101
August 7th, 2015
The Fight for Civil Rights
The fight for civil rights has been a long and controversial ordeal since our nation’s
creation and some would say that same fight is still taking place even to this day. Our nation’s
land was usurped from the Native American population, built upon by the enslaved African-
Americans and cultivated by the Chinese and other immigrants. Despite being proclaimed as
“The Land of the Free”, America has not always been so generous to the many minorities and
immigrants that compose its vast demographic. In fact, African-Americans had been forcefully
taken from their homeland in Africa and enslaved and forced to build this great land that we have
come to enjoy today. Millions of African-Americans have died in the struggle for civil rights and
the resentment and prejudice that once stemmed from our nation’s ugly history is still present in
much of today’s society. Unlike the overt and violent racism that I’ve learned about in this
course, racism today takes on a much more subtle and covert tone. Although legally African-
Americans now enjoy the same rights and liberties as everyone else, the wealth that many
Southerners’ families gained from slavery has not been shared and the ramifications of slavery
and Jim Crow laws still affect many black families today. Many families are still struggling to
pull themselves up from the poverty inherited from previous generations, and the fight for true
equality still continues.
After the last of the Southern rebels surrendered in 1865, President Lincoln had finally
secured his victory and an end to the civil war. His mission to free African-Americans from the
physical bondage that trapped them had finally been realized, but the fight for true independence
and equality would continue through the next century. Slavery was officially abolished in 1865,
and although Lincoln began this fight with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, he
unfortunately would not survive long after the war’s end to see it through. After slavery was
abolished, the real question was now what would these former slaves do? An overwhelming
majority could not read or write nor held any wealth or status to their names. The life of a slave
was the only life they had known, and the former slave-masters were desperate to continue their
way of life uninterrupted. Many former slaves returned to work on the former plantations that
once held their bondage. The Freedmen’s Bureau (Textbook pg. 569) was established by former
