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世纪20年代中期，北方各州已废除了奴隶制。然而在南部，很多州仍坚持认为人们有权拥有奴隶。1860年11月，在美国成为一个独立国家差不多100年之后，亚伯拉罕·林肯刚刚当选为总统，南方的一些州便退出了联邦，宣布它们独立于美利坚合众国的其余部分。这些南方州自称“邦联”，即独立州联合体，各州拥有自己独立的政府。邦联将不再接受远在“北方’的某位政客制定的政策。南方的分离等于是宣战。1865年，南北战争（亦称“州际战争”）终于结束，但成千上万的人已死于这场战争。北方打败了南方，奴隶制在美国各地都被废除。
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.
虽然南北战争已正式结束，但黑人与白人、北方与南方之间的敌意和紧张状态依然持续着。在随后的南部“重建”时期（1865—1877），联邦政府把白人一直享有的一些自由和权利给予了黑人。然而，最终各州，尤其是南方的各州还是制定了一些让“黑鬼安分守己”的新法律。这些法律明确规定，黑人不能同白人一起上学，不能同白人在同一家餐馆用餐，不能参加投票，除非祖父参加过投票，不能同白人使用同一间公共厕所、公共汽车站和火车站的候车室，不能在同一处喷泉或饮水器饮水。黑人继续得到低下的住处和不平等的对待，因为制定法律者和掌权者仍然是白人。
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