Civil rights movement

=== American Civil War and Reconstruction era ===
{{Further|Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution}}

[[File:13th Amendment Pg1of1 AC.jpg|190px|thumb|13th Amendment in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]], bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln]]

Before the [[American Civil War]], [[List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves|eight serving presidents had owned slaves]], almost four million black people remained [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved in the South]], generally only white men with property could vote, and the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] limited U.S. citizenship to [[White people|whites]].<ref>{{cite news |title=How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war |work=The Guardian |date=August 30, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Schultz |first=Jeffrey D. |title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284 |page=284 |year=2002 |publisher=Oryx Press |access-date=March 25, 2010 |isbn=978-1-57356-148-8}}</ref><ref>Leland T. Saito (1998). ''Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb''. p. 154. University of Illinois Press</ref> Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] (1865) that ended slavery; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for [[United States congressional apportionment|Congressional apportionment]]; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time).<ref>{{cite news |title=Black voting rights, 15th Amendment still challenged after 150 years |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/03/black-voting-rights-15th-amendment-still-challenged-after-150-years/4587160002/ |access-date=December 3, 2020|first=Rick|last=Jervis|date=February 3, 2020 |newspaper=USA Today}}</ref> From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent [[Reconstruction era]] during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the [[civil rights]] of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]] (KKK), whose members attacked black and white [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] in order to maintain [[white supremacy]]. In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]], the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]], initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the [[Enforcement Acts]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Jean Edward |title=Grant |date=2001 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-1701-9 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/grant00smit/page/244 244]–247 |url=https://archive.org/details/grant00smit|url-access=registration }}</ref> Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent [[paramilitary]] groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wormser |first=Richard |title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71) |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |publisher=PBS: Jim Crow Stories |access-date=May 12, 2012}}</ref><ref name="States afraid to take action">[http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090101092449/http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html |date=January 1, 2009 }}—U.S. House of Representatives</ref> However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the [[U.S. Federal Government|Federal Government]] to get involved.<ref name="States afraid to take action" /> Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.<ref name="States afraid to take action" />