BLACK CITIZENSHIP in the AGE of JIM CROW at NY Historical Soc. Rage at the Dismal Change

The recently opened exhibit BLACK CITIZENSHIP in the AGE of JIM CROW is a compelling, cogent & cohesive installation of our country's battles and dismal failures for establishing equal protection, justice, and liberties to all men that were the clear intent mandated commencing with the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order signed by Pres. Lincoln on Jan 1, 1863.  The timeline for our nation's Civil War, historic events & objective, and Congressional Amendments 13 and 14 outlining responses to legal rights bestowed former slaves are clearly defined yet wantonly denied.  The exhibit opens with an oil triptych showing a former black slave in works clothes, dressed in Union garb and as a wounded veteran after the Civil War.  The sacrifice and loss of lives within our ruptured nation were devastating and the repercussions debilitating.  The Civil War was fought from April '1861 - May '1865.  It was waged to insure unification & with the explicit goal to eradicate slavery.  The Civil War raged for 2 years prior to Pres. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.  Congressional passage of the 13th Amendment ensuring the abolishment of slavery was not ratified until Jan '1865 & the 14th Amendment outlining federally protected rights for former slaves was not passed by Congress until July 1866.  The 15th Amendment passed in 1870 provides the "rights of citizens of the US to vote and not to be denied by any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude."  These Amendments (did not provide full rights for women or Native Americans) floundered & were infringed for nearly a century following the Civil War & the passages of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. It's shamefully evident and painfully relevant in the 21st C how misconstrued and maligned the battles for racial equality continues to fail African Americans.  The show contains historic replicas from the era including omnipotent documents in the exhibit.  On display are authentic artifacts; a cotton scale, shackles, whips and bibles.  The northern states were mostly segregated.  The southern states during & following Reconstruction, systematically blocked any forward progress towards equality.  When Pres. Hayes withdrew Federal troops from the south in 1877, southern lawlessness reverted to a noxious persecution of African Americans bestowed protection from involuntary servitude or persecution.   The Civil War fought to unite the Union and abolish slavery was a "lost cause" in establishing equal rights.  History has been rewritten claiming the Civil War as being fought over states rights; not slavery.  This exhibit outlines the failure to establish equal rights for black citizens in an orchestrated & the highlights the foundations for the heinous ongoing repression & slaughter of black citizens from the end of the Civil War through WWI and the foundation for divisiveness in our nation today.