"1 The Thirteenth Amendment clearly states the abolishment of slavery with no exceptions or loopholes. Our inalienable rights are proclaimed for all citizens without regard to race, religion, or background with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment gave all males the right to vote regardless of their race, but excluded all females. Even with the new Amendments passed, equality was still far from being reached; society had found a way around the amendments. With the use of Literacy Tests and Poll Taxes local governments had found a way to abide by the new amendments but still prevent African-Americans from voting. Jim Crow laws also prevented freedoms given to African-Americans by the government, until two court cases challenged the laws and segregation. .
A prominent court case in moving African-Americans toward equality in was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. While this case was based on an aspect of segregation, it is actually the successor to the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. This case, brought forward when Homer Plessy was refused the right to sit in a railroad car reserved for whites only, was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. It remained the law until Brown challenged it. "Here the court overturned the doctrine of separate but equal that had been sanctioned in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and declared that segregation would have no place in U.S. public education. This opinion, in turn, sparked both support and opposition, including numerous attempts to trim the power of the Court in succeeding decades." This case was revisited within a year, with the court being sued in Brown v. Board of Education II. This case declared that local school authorities, subject to the supervision of U.S. district courts, were responsible for seeing that desegregation was implemented. A companion case, Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), extended the ruling on segregation to the District of Columbia, under the Fifth Amendment that applied to the national government, rather than the states.