What did ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment mean for African Americans?

It provided African Americans with a future free from slavery

The thirteenth amendment was the one that oficially abolish the slavery in US soil and the unwilling servitude, maintaining this only for the inmates.

It was proposed to different legislatures around the country during January of 1865 by the US Congress and ratified on December of that same year by the third quarters of the states. A detailed that called my atention was that the state of Mississippi ratified this in the year 1995.

Thirteenth Amendment:

"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."

To the African American people the ratification of the thirteenth amendement meant that they were oficially free from the slavery, before this they had only the Lincoln's emancipation procalamation but this ruled only for the 11 confederated states that stood against the Union during the Civil War.