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= Black History in America. = The first Black people brought to America came in 1619, a year before the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower. By 1860, 3.8 million slaves accounted for one third of the total population of the southern states. In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the southern states at war with the North. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the US Constitution were ratified between 1865 and 1870. They outlawed slavery, granted blacks full citizenship and extended blacks the right to vote. After the Civil War, Southern blacks began to vote, were elected to the United States Congress, held local public office, established schools and built towns and businesses. After its founding in 1867, the Ku Klux Klan became a power in the South and beyond. The Klan employed lynching, cross burnings and other forms of terrorism, violence and intimidation. During the first half of the 20th century, over 5 million African Americans moved from the South to northern cities, in hopes of finding better jobs and greater equality. In the 1930s, the concentration of blacks in urban areas led to the cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance



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