In 1863, as a strategy to end the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that all persons held as slaves within the Confederate states were and henceforward forever would be free. It took many years before that promise came true, and for a long time after freedom came, prejudice and discriminatory Jim Crow laws continued to keep African Americans segregated and denied full equality. Eventually, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided legal equality under the law, and the African American community continues the struggle for equal treatment today. Following the Civil War, Wanderer survivors and their families faced choices about how to best achieve the benefits of freedom, with some continuing their lives in the South, others seeking a way to return to Africa, and still others migrating north in search of opportunities and to build a new life.
