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Certain Unalienable Rights We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… Even after the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, African Americans have been struggling for the right to equal treatment that was promised in the Declaration of Independence. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution may have ended slavery in the United States, but it did not end racial discrimination and prejudice. In the years following the Civil War, blacks in the U.S. have continued to have to fight for equal treatment and civil rights. After the end of the Civil War the U.S. government set out to reconstruct the country. A major point of concern following the war was how to deal with the freed slaves. The reconstructed states had to define the rights of the more than 4 million “new” U.S. citizens. The idea of treating the freed slaves exactly like white citizens was barely even considered. States whose governments were devoted to white supremacy enacted what were known as “Black Codes”. These codes excluded black people from voting and from juries, did not permit them to testify against whites in court, banned interracial marriage, and punished blacks more severely than whites for