Amos Fortune, Free Man

Following the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the 13th Amendment was ratified. This amendment granted legal freedom to all then-enslaved people in the United States. By then, the nation had entered the Reconstruction Era, during which the government attempted to bring the divided nation back together as well as implement widespread integration for the newly freed Black people. During this time, the government established African American citizenship (14th Amendment, ratified in 1868) and their right to vote (15th Amendment, ratified in 1870). The government provided funding and troops in an attempt to create a pathway for emancipated people to be incorporated into the nation. The Freedmen’s Bureau—one of the signal projects under Reconstruction—functioned as a refugee center and managed Black resettlement. In 1877, however, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president and obliged Southern demands to withdraw troops. Without strong government enforcement, Reconstruction ended, giving way to an era of expanding white supremacist organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, race riots, lynching, the disbandment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the overturning of much legislation that had enabled Black people to vote freely and acquire leadership roles. This was also the period during which Jim Crow law came about, legalizing segregation in the South.