Emancipation did not resolve all the issues facing people of
African descent in America. Even after the end of slavery,
African Americans and their supporters worked to define and
protect the rights to which they were entitled. The pressing
need for better constitutional protection for African Americans
arose in the years immediately after emancipation, when many
southern states enacted black laws that were designed to keep
freed blacks in a position very close to slavery. To address the
problem, Republican leaders in Congress initiated a number of
provisions better to protect the rights of freedpeople. The
Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, established the formerly
enslaved as citizens of the United States, entitled to the
protections provided by the nation's Constitution. The next
question was the issue of participating in the American
democracy. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in Congress in
February 1869, gave voting rights to African American men and
was intended to help black men partake in the dem