none of this was enshrined by law until the 1866 Civil Rights Act and fully protected by the 14th Amendment.
Exactly.
Less than a year later when 4 Million of the 4.5 Million Black people in America were emancipated.
4 Million Black people were enslaved. The other 500K were not -- and most were not even classified as "Black/Negro" - some were FPOC, some were manumitted -- but the 99% of the Black people in this country (most of the AADOS ancestors) were enslaved in Confederate States.
Some of the 500K immigrated from Haiti and were not classified as "Black/Negro." Sadly, some of those same people were enslavers.
AAME :
The Black Republic and Louisiana
Claiborne and other officials labored in vain; the population of Afro-Creoles grew larger and even more assertive after the entry of the Haitian émigrés from Cuba, nearly 90 percent of whom settled in New Orleans. The 1809 migration brought 2,731 whites, 3,102 free persons of African descent, and 3,226 enslaved refugees to the city, doubling its population. Sixty-three percent of Crescent City inhabitants were now black. Among the nation's major cities only Charleston, with a 53 percent black majority, was comparable.
The multiracial refugee population settled in the French Quarter and the neighboring Faubourg Marigny district, and revitalized Creole culture and institutions. New Orleans acquired a reputation as the nation's "Creole Capital."
The rapid growth of the city's population of free persons of color strengthened the "three-caste" society - white, mixed, black - that had developed during the years of French and Spanish rule. This was quite different from the racial order prevailing in the rest of the United States, where attempts were made to confine all persons of African descent to a separate and inferior racial caste - a situation brought about by political reality in the South that promoted white unity across class lines and the immersion of all blacks into a single and subservient social caste.
And to keep it real - in 1866 a portion of those 4 Million didn't even know they were free/emancipated -- and still enslaved. In addition, were put in fukked up sharecropping contracts -- basically still enslaved via a contract.
They didn't need it "enshrined" before 1866 -- because Black people were legally enslaved in the U.S.
Our ancestors -- and many of our 2/3/4 Great Grandfathers volunteered, fought in the USCT to make sure we had that right.
The
U.S. Congress passed the
Confiscation Act of 1862[1] in July 1862.
It freed slaves whose owners were in rebellion against the United States, and Militia Act of 1862 empowered the President to use former slaves in any capacity in the army. President
Abraham Lincoln was concerned with public opinion in the four
border states that remained in the Union, as they had numerous slaveholders, as well as with northern Democrats who supported the war but were less supportive of abolition than many northern Republicans. Lincoln opposed early efforts to recruit black soldiers, although he accepted the Army using them as paid workers. Native Americans also played a significant role in the colored regiments of the
American Civil War.
[2]
In September 1862, Lincoln issued his preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, announcing that all slaves in rebellious states would be free as of January 1. Recruitment of colored regiments began in full force following the Proclamation in January 1863.
[3]