The history of African Americans in the United States began with slavery and they received their freedom in 1862 when slavery was abolished. Whites in the South were particularly frustrated by this decision, as a large part of the Southern economy was based on slavery. Blacks then began to move to the large cities of the American North, where they lived in cramped, segregated and discriminated neighborhoods. In the fifties and sixties of the last century, there was a struggle for civil rights that significantly changed American society. Various actions such as lawsuits, marches, protests and boycotts were organized, which were closely followed by the American public. The high point of the struggle was during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, when a large march on Washington took place in the summer of 1963, in which more than 200 thousand people took part and after which Kennedy introduced the idea of a civil rights law for African Americans. When King Jr, the central figure of the civil rights struggle, was assassinated, the struggle suddenly fell silent, but its principles lived on through the struggles of other social groups for decades after the end of the civil rights struggle.