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Throughout history there have been many acts against blacks to keep them from voting. Even though on Dec. 6, 1865 the 13th Amendment was completely ratified, abolishing slavery in all states, and made it possible for African Americans to vote. Along with the 14th and 15th amendments. About 40,000 slaves remained in Kentucky and they were freed by the Amendment. Ever since then every MAN in the United States was allowed to vote. Women weren't able to do that for a few more decades. Just because the blacks were allowed to vote doesn't meant that they could do it easily. The Black Codes were created in the south to try and keep the African Americans in their place. The white southerners believed these codes would help keep them from being educated, which gave the argument that if a black man wasn't educated, then why should he be able to vote? Well many African Americans were smarter than that, they sent their children to school to make sure that their children could fight for their equality when they grow up. Klansman also kept blacks from voting. They spread terror and fear throughout all the freedmen. At night the KKK would ride around town on horses, fully clothed so that no one could tell their identity, with weapons lynching blacks or burning crosses in their front yard, which might eventually catch the house on fire. Jim Crow Laws were set up as well. These laws helped to keep African Americans from entering politics, and make the whites feel that the blacks were still inferior to them. They did this by Making the African American's drink form separate water fountains, go to different schools, go to different churches, and go to different restaurants. As time went on the blacks also had to sit in the back of buses, not the front. In one incident this African American lady was sitting in the "ladies" carriage of a train, and the conductor forced her to go to the carriage reserved for African Americans. She refused on the grounds that she was a lady in every way, the way she acted, dressed, and presented her self. She eventually sued the train company, but a court in the South repealed the decision.

Twain satirizes this in Huck Finn from a southerners point of view. The South believed that African Americans were the inferior race, and they believed that the blacks shouldn't have the same rights as the whites or be able to vote. When the blacks were finally allowed to vote, many southerners became upset and formed groups such as the Ku Klux Klan to keep blacks from being educated therefore understanding their rights and realizing their equality.