Thurgood Mashall - Attorney for Brown v. Board of Education case and the first African-American appointed to the Supreme Court.
Black History Month provides our country with the excellent opportunity to recognize those that tirelessly worked to ensure a better future for generations to come. As an African American with an interest in law, this month provides me with the opportunity to reflect upon just how far our country has legislatively come to inclusively encompass “liberty and justice for all.”
- 1654-1865: Slavery, which is forced labor where people are considered to be property of others, was a legal institution within the boundaries of much of the present United States.
- September 22, 1862: President Abraham Lincoln issued the Executive Order, as Commander in Chief, of the Emancipation Proclamation, in which its first executive order was to declare freedom of all slaves in all states.
- January 1, 1863: The second executive order of the Emancipation Proclamation specifically named 10 states that were to abolish slavery.
Immediately following the Civil War, the Reconstruction Amendments were adopted between 1865 and 1870 to abolish slavery (13th Amendment), broadly define citizenship (14th Amendment, which overruled the Dred Scott v. Sanford ruling of 1857 that excluded slaves and their descendants from Constitutional rights), and grant voting rights regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (15th Amendment).
Although slavery took its rightful place as a part of American history, no longer revealing the hypocrisy of a nation that declared its independence from the British Empire in 1776 by stating “all men are created equal,” changing the mindsets and behavior of people proved to be a challenging feat unto itself.
