Quotes & Sayings About The Civil War Amendments

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

Even in the United States, after all, what brought equal rights to blacks wasn't the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments passed after the Civil War, but rather the grassroots civil rights movement nearly one hundred years later. Laws matter, but typically changing the law by itself accomplishes little. — Nicholas D. Kristof

The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall

The Bill of Life The Second Civil War, also known as "The Heartland War," was a long and bloody conflict fought over a single issue. To end the war, a set of constitutional amendments known as "The Bill of Life" was passed. It satisfied both the Pro-life and the Pro-choice armies. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively "abort" a child . . . . . on the condition that the child's life doesn't "technically" end. The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called "unwinding." Unwinding is now a common, and accepted practice in society. — Neal Shusterman

Thus these three amendments to the Constitution [13th, 14th, 15th] were ratified while the ten Southern states were under martial law, and "had no law at all." The Force Acts, the four Reconstruction Acts, and the Civil Rights Act were all passed by Congress while the Southern states were not allowed to hold free elections, and all voters were under close supervision by federal troops. Even Soviet Russia has never staged such mockeries of the election procedures. — Eustace Mullins

Segregation was a burden for many blacks, because the end of the civil war and the amendments added to the constitution elevated expectations beyond reality in some respects. — Ed Smith