By the mid-1820s, the states in the North had banned slavery. In the South, however, many states still insisted that people had the right to own slaves. Upon the election of AbrahamLincoln to the presidency in November of 1860, almost 100 years after the United States had become an independent nation, some of the states in the South seceded from the Union, declaring themselves independent from the rest of the U. S. A. These southern states called themselves The Confederacy, a confederation of independent states, each with its own separate government. The Confederacy would no longer accept policies made by some distant politician from "up North." The separation of the South was equivalent to a declaration of war.In 1865 the Civil War, ( also known as the “War between the States”) finally came to an end, but not before hundreds of thousands of men had died. The North had defeated the South, and slavery was banned in all parts of the United States.
到19世紀20年代中期，北方各州已廢除了奴隸制。然而在南部，很多州仍堅持認為人們有權擁有奴隸。1860年11月，在美國成為一個獨立國家差不多100年之后，亞伯拉罕·林肯剛剛當選為總統，南方的一些州便退出了聯邦，宣布它們獨立于美利堅合眾國的其余部分。這些南方州自稱“邦聯”，即獨立州聯合體，各州擁有自己獨立的政府。邦聯將不再接受遠在“北方’的某位政客制定的政策。南方的分離等于是宣戰。1865年，南北戰爭（亦稱“州際戰爭”）終于結束，但成千上萬的人已死于這場戰爭。北方打敗了南方，奴隸制在美國各地都被廢除。
Although the Civil War was officially over, the hostility and tension between blacks and whites and North and South persisted. During the period of "Reconstruction" that followed (1865-1877), the federal government gave black men some of the freedoms and privileges that white men had always enjoyed. Eventually, however, various states, particularly those in the South, enacted new laws to keep "the nigras in their place." These laws specified that blacks could not go to school with whites, that they could not eat at the same restaurants, that they could not vote unless their grandfathers had voted, that they could not use the same public rest rooms or waiting rooms at bus and train stations or drink from the same water fountains. Blacks continued to receive inferior accommodations and unequal treatment, since whites were still the ones who made the laws and held the power.
雖然南北戰爭已正式結束，但黑人與白人、北方與南方之間的敵意和緊張狀態依然持續著。在隨后的南部“重建”時期（1865—1877），聯邦政府把白人一直享有的一些自由和權利給予了黑人。然而，最終各州，尤其是南方的各州還是制定了一些讓“黑鬼安分守己”的新法律。這些法律明確規定，黑人不能同白人一起上學，不能同白人在同一家餐館用餐，不能參加投票，除非祖父參加過投票，不能同白人使用同一間公共廁所、公共汽車站和火車站的候車室，不能在同一處噴泉或飲水器飲水。黑人繼續得到低下的住處和不平等的對待，因為制定法律者和掌權者仍然是白人。
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