The history of human rights in the United States has been a paradox. Despite the theoretical adherence to equal human rights in the foundation documents of the country itself, in practice they were not extended to many sections of the population – in particular African Americans and Native Americans. Indeed, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (the main author of the Declaration of Independence) were themselves owners of black slaves and this activity remained central to economic development until finally abolished in 1865 after a protracted and bloody civil war. For a century after this abolition many in the white population refused to see African Americans as equal or, more alarmingly, even human. Crucially, despite bringing an end to slavery, Abraham Lincoln is a part of this national paradox.

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the lot of African Americans in the southern states was not much better than before ‘emancipation’. The initial rights granted to former slaves were gradually eroded in the former Confederacy, enforced by the influence and violence of the Ku Klux Klan through exclusions, imprisonment, beatings and lynchings. Indeed, systematic lynching of African Americans from 1890 to 1920 amounted to over 4,000 murders and major riots between white supremacists and African Americans were ongoing, with particularly heavy casualties in Memphis and New Orleans in 1866 (Zinn and Buhle, 2008: 158). Facing this history down was seen on occasion, with an early attempt coming from President Ulysses S. Grant, who took strong action via the Justice Department – which he set up in 1870 – and used troops against the Klan.