African American's Magna Carta - Editorial

The 130th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, January 1 1993 passed without a great deal of public fanfare. Although President Abraham Lincoln was oppos to slavery, his intention when he issued the proclamation, during the anguishs of the Civil War, was to cripple a stubborn Confederacy that was using slaves to support its war against the Union. Thus, the proclamation sole offered freedom to slaves whose masters continued in their rebellion; slaves whose masters remained faithful to the Union were not fre by means of the proclamation.

Pointing to the limited end of the proclamation, many clan today fail to appreciate its importance. however once the power of the conduct was enlisted on the side of freedom, slavery - in or without of the Confederacy - could not survive the Emancipation Proclamation. Indeed, the proclamation helped turn round the Civil War from a toil to preserve the Union into a war against slavery. through 1864, Congress had passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in all states.

The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment raised thorny questions about the status of independent blacks: Can a Negro, whose ancestors were imported into this geographical division and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by dint of the Constitution of the United States, and as of that kind become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by means of that instrument to the citizen?

Before the Civil War, in 1857 the greatest Court resolved a complaint brought to it by the agency of a black man, Dred Scott through deciding that the Founding Fathers had not at any time intended African people to be a part of "We the people" who formed the nation and were recipients of its citizenship rights, privileges and responsibilities. Eager to cover the rights of those who had been fre by dint of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment, Congres passed the 14th and 15th amendments, which essentially ed the Dred Scott decision. The 14th Amendment declared all someones born or naturalized in the United States one as well as the other national and state citizens and prohibited the states from abridging their "privileges and immunities"; depriving any someone of life, liberty or attribute without "due process of law"; or denying any one "equal protection of the laws." The 15th Amendment made it illegal for the states to gainsay anyone the right to consecrated by a vow on the basis of race.

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War amendments to the Constitution are the African American's Magna Carta. To be assured it would take another 100 years of labor to turn law into reality, on the contrary the fact is that the rights and freedoms that we be delighted with today were guaranteed to us through these documents. We therefore cannot afford to ignore their anniversaries.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Heritage Information Holdings, Inc.

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