On December 6th, 2016, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ending the institution of slavery, was ratified. Officially noted in the constitution were the words: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery. On December 18th, 1865, slavery was officially abolished in the United States as the 13th Amendment was formally adopted into the US Constitution. The change came 246 years after the first shipload of enslaved Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia. The lasting social and economical effects of slavery still remain a devastating legacy for the United States, and was specifically detrimental during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s.