E/CN.4/1995/78/Add.1 page 9 25. Slavery was sanctioned by the difference between people of colour and oppressed whites. The poor whites were at least human. The enslaved African and the Native Americans were considered less than human, "uncivilized savages" even. The "3/5 of a person" clause in the United States Constitution best exemplifies that reality. In addition, and closely related was the European settler expansionism across the continent. In practice, this meant that President Andrew Jackson would initiate the federal policy contained in the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that would lead to the infamous "trail of tears". 26. It was the Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution that officially ended slavery in the United States of America. Although slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, all southern states and many others passed "Black codes" or "Jim Crow" laws mandating racial segregation in almost all areas of public life and different treatment in both private and public affairs. The signature of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln also marked the official beginning of the United States Government’s increase in wars against indigenous peoples, further reducing their population from an estimated 12 million (at first contact) to less than 200,000 by the late 1880s. 27. With respect to the reconstruction, constitutional amendments, the Bill of Rights and other laws, according to Vine Deloria, represent a special situation in their applicability to American Indians: "The Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution at a time when many Indian nations did not recognize the United States as a superior sovereign to whom they owed allegiance. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were added during the treaty-making period when it was anticipated that Indians would always remain separate from American society. The Sixteenth, Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments were adopted long after the end of treaty-making when everyone assumed that the federal government had a plenary power over Indians, which precluded the operation of these amendments with respect to Indians." 8/ 28. In effect, Jim Crow laws once again legalized and legislated white supremacy and white domination throughout society for all national minorities and indigenous peoples, who existed outside of any constitutional protection. Segregation and the reservation system were established to consolidate this domination. The post-Civil War amendments and all the achievements of the period of reconstruction were finally undermined with the adoption by States and the federal Government of the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine. The Supreme Court replaced slavery with an equally effective instrument of domination and subordination. 29. The Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal case, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1896, codified the segregated society where race determined social position. The violent counterrevolution was also achieved because of the terrorist activities of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, white citizens’ councils or random acts of racist violence. In fact, between the end of reconstruction and the early years of the