Throughout the United States, free Blacks were treated as social
             pariahs, whether they
            
             lived in the North or the South, and they were denied legal and political
             equality with
            
             whites. In addition, public facilities such as hotels, bathrooms, and
             schools were strictly
            
             separated by the concept of "de jure" segregation, or segregation by law.
             Notorious slave
            
             rebel, Nat Turner led some eighty-plus slaves to a revolt in Virginia, and
             the uprising
            
             terrified slave owners throughout the South. Social and political controls
             on slaves
            
             became tighter, and the beatings and lynching of attempted slave uprisings
             grew
            
             throughout the mid 1800's in the South.
            
             Of course, racism was ubiquitous in the U.S. at the time, not merely
             the South. In
            
             fact, even after the progressive abolition movements of the 1830's, free
             Blacks could
            
             only vote in four New England states, and with the exception of
             Massachusetts, they
            
             couldn't testify anywhere in court cases that involved whites. They were
             denied U.S.
            
             passports and even denied citizenship after the landmark 1857 U.S. Supreme
             Court case
            
             when Dred Scott tried to claim legal ownership of himself. Even free
             Blacks in the South
            
             had to carry certificates of manumission in order to prove to white
             authorities that they
            
             had been indeed granted freedom. Consequently, free Blacks in the South
             and the North
            
             identified with the travails of slaves, and some forged a bond that would
             lead to sparking
            
             the Civil War and the ultimate abolition of all slave institutions.
            
             In the 1830's, Black newspapers such as the "Freedman's Journal" and
             "The North
            
             Star, founded by Frederick Douglass (in 1847) gave Black writers a chance
             to denounce
            
             slavery, advocate resistance, and voice their movement for liberation. As
             the United
            
             States gained new territories out west, slavery came to the forefront of
             the national
            
             political agenda primarily b...