Sean Flores
Mr. Drummond
American Government
December 1, 2015

The fight for rights and freedoms for African Americans has been a long and painful one. It goes all the way back to the pre-civil war area were all African Americans were slaves around white civilian households. During that time it was normal to have slaves but little did they know a civil war and reconstruction would occur that would help slowly lead to change in the way of life for not only African Americans but also white civilians. Some states will fight to keep their right to contain slaves while others fight to free them but eventually slowly it will lead to how we know African Americans today which is U.S. Citizens. Pre-civil war slaves had little to no rights. They were bought from their mainland and then sold here on U.S. soil for usually labor purposes. They would work on huge plantations such as tobacco, cotton, and rice plantations. These were mainly in the south because these plantations required a lot of labor but in the north it didn’t become as widespread because there were little farms and people made a living off of manufacturing goods. During this time people would defend slavery by saying it was a necessary evil or that it was a good thing to have slaves because it helped everyone involved. This would cause some friction between people in the north who thought slavery was wrong and people in the south who relied on slavery to run their plantations. Even though slowly congress would try to compromise with slavery states and pass laws such as you can no longer import slaves into the U.S., Slaves who escaped to where slavery was illegal had to be returned if claimed by their owner, and slaves counted as 3/5 of a person when it came to determine how many representatives each state would have. Slaves would then become sick of being treated so poorly such as a certain individual