The Timeline and key dates

The American Civil War brought the end of slavery, but segregation continued until the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Racism continues to this day.

1865 -  The Union wins the American civil war and slavery is abolished.

What did abolition change for the slaves? The end of slavery the start of segregation

Basically the former slaves were now "free" but they were terribly poor and were oppressed by a racist society dominated by 'whites'. 

The period of segregation began.

Writing in April 2016 K.E. Carr describes the early years of reconstruction (http://quatr.us/northamerica/after1500/people/blacks.htm) 

"During the Civil War, in 1863 AD, President Lincoln announced the end of slavery. When the North won the war, in 1865, Congress and the states voted to change the Constitution to make slavery illegal, so all the people who were slaves in the South became free.

Some people chose to leave the plantations, now that they were free. Some of them moved to the North to work on the railroads or as house-cleaners or nannies or cooks, or to start their own businesses. Some people went out West to be settlers or cowboys, but Western states made laws preventing African-Americans from moving there. A few people went back to Africa.

 

A 13-year-old boy sharecropping (1937)

But just like when the Austrian and Russian rulers freed their people in the 1850s and 1860s, most people just stayed about where they were before. They still didn't own any land to farm, and if they tried to get land, white people attacked them. A lot of people kept on planting and picking cotton, but now they were sharecroppers instead of slaves. For a lot of people, it didn't make much difference, only there were not so many beatings and you didn't have your kids or your husband taken away from you anymore. But white people still terrified black people by killing them for nothing, or for almost nothing, and no white judge or jury in the south would send any white man to jail for killing a black man. Black people accused of crimes were often killed without a trial, by lynching.

Nannying ca. 1900

White workers' unions usually didn't let black people join, and white owners often used black workers as strike-breakers or paid them lower wages. So black people started their own unions, or joined new unions like the STFU, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, that had both white and black members. These helped black people to get better pay and better working arrangements.

About fifty years later, though, in 1910, the cotton was ruined by a kind of insect called a boll weevil. A lot of sharecroppers were starving from not having enough cotton to sell for food. Besides, it was getting cheaper to raise cotton using machines instead of people. So a lot more people decided to leave the South and go north to work. Because white people wouldn't hire them for any good jobs, they still worked mostly as servants - as nannies, or cooks, or taking care of sick people - or in hard, dirty jobs like cleaning streets or building railroads."

The slow development of freedom for African Americans

The situation of the former slaves evolved very slowly. The first and second world wars brought changes as they were enrolled in the american army and found work in the industries linked to the war as there was a shortage of workers.

Again KE Carr writing in April 2016 summarises these changes.
http://quatr.us/northamerica/after1500/people/blacks2.htm

"During World War I, many white men were away being soldiers, and because of the war no new people came from Europe to take their places. So some black people were able to find work in factories, which paid better than any work they had had before. In World War II, in the 1940s, the same thing happened, and more black people began to work in factories, making weapons and building boats for the war. By the 1950s, new government farm policies pretty much ended sharecropping in the United States.

In the 1950s, these people, who were richer and better educated than their parents or grandparents had been, began to protest and try to get rights equal to white people. In 1955, the NAACP organizers Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which won the right for black people to sit with white people on the city bus. Some black people, like the boxer Muhammad Ali and the preacher Malcolm X, decided to stop being Christians, the religion of the old slave-owners, and convert to Islam. Other black people stayed Christians and used their religion to organize protests.

 

Martin Luther King

The Christians' most important leader was Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King helped to get Congress to pass a Civil Rights Bill in 1964 that made it illegal to keep black people out of any public place, like a swimming pool or a restaurant, and also illegal to refuse to hire black people for a job just because they were black. But Malcolm X was shot dead in 1965, and a white man who was angry about Dr. King's work shot him dead in 1968.

Here's a video of some people in South Carolina marching to protest the way they were being treated:

 

Where black people live now

Because of the Civil Rights Act and their own work, black people managed to get better jobs, better houses, and better schools than they had had before. But even now, while some black people are rich, most black people are still not as well off as white people, and they still suffer from racism that keeps them from getting good jobs or sending their kids to good schools. And most black people are still pretty much where they were before, working as unskilled labor for low wages for white people in the South."

Barack Obama - The first African American president

In 2008 the United States of America elected Barack Obama to be president.

He is the first African American to be elected president and this shows how much the United States has evolved since 1865.

You can read more about Obama here


But even with an African American as its leader the USA remains very racist - there is still enormous discrimination against African Americans and a new form of racism is emerging against hispanics (people from mexico and latin america) and muslims. The election of Donald Trump as the next President on a clearly racist platform shows this very clearly.
You can read more about Donald Trump here.