13th Amendment Dbq

After the end of the Civil War, the United Stated underwent a period of Reconstruction. During this era, the US ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. The amendment intended to resolve pre-Civil War issues, granting privileges and rights as well as equal protection of the laws to every American person, regardless of color. In this paper I intend to show how the rights outlined in the Fourteenth Amendment have affected individual rights vis-à-vis corporation rights. More specifically, I will examine how the Fourteenth Amendment and its Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause were initially intended to offer protection to African Americans but resulted in the rights of corporations as they were able seek further legal protections. …show more content…
The recently freed slaves were subject to laws known as “Black Codes.” These laws kept the former slaves below the status of every other citizen, with their status fixed within the laws. They were not able to vote, move freely, be employed, or own property (Fleischman 82). Major disputes between freedmen and employers were to be addressed only by the local courts (Fleischman, 106). Decades after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, a case regarding racial segregation and inequality was finally heard in the Supreme Court. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Plessy—a man who was 1/8 black — argued that that the Separate Car Act that required him to sit in a sperate railway car was a violation of the 14th Amendment (under the Equal Protection Clause), which prohibits “restrictive legislation on the part of the States.” However, the majority opinion stated that being told to sit in a separate care was not a violation of his rights, so long as the cars were equal. They upheld discriminatory laws and justified “separate but equal” because to the majority, there was “…no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races or reestablish a state of involuntary servitude” (Plessy

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