Synthesis: The African American Struggle
Ever since the first Africans were brought to the United States as slaves, the country has been rampant with racial injustice. From slavery and the three-fifths compromise to segregation and the civil rights movement, blacks in America have been continually oppressed by other ethnic groups and the government. Over time, through speeches and protest, African Americans have drastically improved their social and legal status in America. Throughout the history of the United States, black people have been seen as inferior to whites legally and socially, and have been denied equal opportunities in education and employment. From the inception of the United States government, African Americans have been
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This era was plagued with segregation, police violence and hate crimes. Arguably the most influential civil rights speaker, Martin Luther King Jr. made many speeches focused on the mistreatment of blacks in America. He was famous for his “I have a Dream” speech in Washington. In this speech, he says “One hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” With this, he displays that African Americans, even after the freeing of the slaves and ensuing liberties guaranteed by the constitution, are still widely discriminated against. The segregation of public spaces and schools were predominant injustices during the civil rights era. He, later through this speech and many others helped the African American populace beat segregation and make blacks equal under the …show more content…
Racism and discrimination against African Americans existed long after the freedom and equality that was supposedly guaranteed by the constitution. After the emancipation of the slaves, widespread social maltreatment African Americans stopped blacks in both the north and the south from getting even the most basic necessities. Many leaders of the black community spoke out about this inequality. Mary Church Terrell spoke about this in her “What It Means to be Colored in the Capital of the U.S.” She says, “...any other dark race can find hotel accommodations, if they can pay for them. The colored man alone is thrust out of the hotels of the national capital like a , leper.” She later adds, “... I may walk from the Capitol to the White House, ravenously hungry and abundantly supplied with money with which to purchase a meal, without finding a single restaurant in which I would be permitted to take a morsel of food, unless I were willing to sit behind a screen.” In these stories, she attempts to highlight how she could not even get a hotel or a meal in Washington D.C. just because she was black. She also points out that “any other dark race” could get a hotel or meal, showing that the discrimination was exclusive to blacks. She also touched on unfairness in employment as well. “Unless I am willing to engage in a few menial occupations, in which the pay for my services would be very poor, there is no way for me to earn
Younge, Gary. "America dreaming: the horrors of segregation bound the US civil rights movement together. Fifty years on from Martin Luther King's great speech, inequality persists--but in subtler ways." New Statesman [1996] 23 Aug. 2013: 20+. Student Resources in Context. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
For 75 years following reconstruction the United States made little advancement towards racial equality. Many parts of the nation enacted Jim Crowe laws making separation of the races not just a matter of practice but a matter of law. The laws were implemented with the explicit purpose of keeping black American’s from being able to enjoy the rights and freedoms their white counterparts took for granted. Despite the efforts of so many nameless forgotten heroes, the fate of African Americans seemed to be in the hands of a racist society bent on keeping them down; however that all began to change following World War II. Thousands of African American men returned from Europe with a renewed purpose and determined to break the proverbial chains segregation had keep them in since the end of the American Civil War. With a piece of Civil Rights legislation in 1957, the federal government took its first step towards breaking the bonds that had held too many citizens down for far too long. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was a watered down version of the law initially proposed but what has been perceived as a small step towards correcting the mistakes of the past was actually a giant leap forward for a nation still stuck in the muck of racial division. What some historians have dismissed as an insignificant and weak act was perhaps the most important law passed during the nation’s civil rights movement, because it was the first and that cannot be underestimated.
African Americans who came to America to live the golden dream have been plagued with racism, discrimination and segregation throughout a long and complicated history of events that took place in the United States dating back to slavery to the civil rights movements. Today, African American history is celebrated annually in the United States during the month of February which is designated Black History Month. This paper will look back into history beginning in the late 1800’s through modern day America and describe specific events where African Americans have endured discrimination, segregation, racism and have progressively gained rights and freedoms by pushing civil rights movement across America.
The Americans of African and European Ancestry did not have a very good relationship during the Civil war. They were a major cause of the Civil War. But, did they fix or rebuild that relationship after the war from the years 1865 to 1900? My opinion would be no. I do not believe that the Americans of African and European ancestry successfully rebuilt their relationship right after the Civil war. Even though slavery was finally slowly getting abolished, there was still much discrimination against the African Americans. The Jim Crow laws and the black codes discriminated against black people. The Ku Klux Klan in particular discriminated against black people. Even though the United States government tried to put laws into the Constitution to protect black people, the African Americans were discriminated in every aspect of life from housing, working, educating, and even going to public restrooms!
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
For as long as I can remember, racial injustice has been the topic of discussion amongst the American nation. A nation commercializing itself as being free and having equality for all, however, one questions how this is true when every other day on the news we hear about the injustices and discriminations of one race over another. Eula Biss published an essay called “White Debt” which unveils her thoughts on discrimination and what she believes white Americans owe, the debt they owe, to a dark past that essentially provided what is out there today. Ta-Nehisi Coates published “Between the World and Me,” offering his perspective about “the Dream” that Americans want, the fear that he faced being black growing up and that black bodies are what
“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.” That was the famous “I Had a Dream” speech held by Martin Luther King Jr., which was said on the steps of Lincoln Memorial. African Americans had numerous amounts of barriers to overcome. They had these barriers to reach just to be treated equal with other people over history. African Americans were taken from their family to work for a stranger for free under harsh conditions; this period of history is called slavery. 200 years after the slave trade was abolished, the African Americans still had to overcome more barriers to reach equality. African Americans went through a tough time during the period of segregation. Segregation was harsh in the south, especially in Louisiana. After the two rough periods in history, African Americans still had more barriers to overcome to reach equality. The period after segregation when people of all races started to go to school together is called integration. African Americans were subjected to racism during this time period. African Americans made one final push for equality during the Civil Rights Movement. Racism has plagued Louisiana in its beginning years. Written in the U.S. Constitution, it is said that all men are created equal, but African Americans had to fight for their equ...
After the end of World War II, domestic unrest infected the United States. The country spoke only of freedom, yet harshly oppressed an entire race. According to the United States Census Bureau in 1960 African Americans accounted for 10.5% of the nation’s population (“Population Distribution by Race: 1940-2010”). If not everyone in a country is free, then the country itself is not free. Segregation was a part of every day life and nasty feelings between brothers and sisters of different races ran wild. A Civil Rights movement began to pick up in the states. A young Reverend by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to the head of this movement. As a result of his superior morals, public confidence, and dedication to the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. was “one of the most inspirational leaders in [American] history,” who “left a shining
For as long as I could remember, African Americans have succumbed to some of the cruelest treatment seen in America’s history. This mistreatment has taken on many forms particularly in respect to social and racial discrimination. Examples of prior struggles for equality of African Americans in America may include: the pursuit of their freedom and equal treatment that was attributed by slavery, attaining voting rights, and being able to secure a job that would not discriminate based solely on their skin color. A number of Key figures were instrumental in making American what it is today and here are just to name a few: Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
Imagine living in a world at which you are harassed and abused just because of the color of your skin. Since the beginning of America’s existence, Whites have had this strong hate towards the black population. The whites wanted to continue to have the power and control in their hands. In order for them to achieve this, the white southerners came up with the Jim Crow laws to prevent the African Americans from achieving their god given right of being free and equal. This did not end the African hope of becoming equal. After many years of mistreatment, African Americans knew that change in society was necessary. The members of the black population have been enslaved, beaten, abused, neglected and just taken advantage of, since the end of the civil war, even into present times, African Americans have struggled for equality and rights that white Americans often take for granted. Arguably, no post-war struggle was larger or more significant than the movement to eliminate the Jim Crow laws from existence in the South. As a large portion of the Civil Rights movement, many works are dedicated to the efforts put forth and the ensuing results, including “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka”, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, “Black Revolution”, “Bigger Than a Hamburger,” and the act from Rosa Parks.
Nearly three centuries ago, black men and women from Africa were brought to America and put into slavery. They were treated more cruelly in the United States than in any other country that had practiced slavery. African Americans didn’t gain their freedom until after the Civil War, nearly one-hundred years later. Even though African Americans were freed and the constitution was amended to guarantee racial equality, they were still not treated the same as whites and were thought of as second class citizens. One man had the right idea on how to change America, Martin Luther King Jr. had the best philosophy for advancing civil rights, he preached nonviolence to express the need for change in America and he united both African Americans and whites together to fight for economic and social equality.
The United States rests upon a foundation of freedom, where its citizens can enjoy many civil liberties as the result of decades of colonial struggles. However, African Americans did not achieve freedom concurrently with whites, revealing a contradiction within the “nation of liberty”. It has been stated that "For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and culture that had sustained slavery in the first place." African Americans gained freedom through the changing economic nature of slavery and historical events like the Haitian Revolution policies, whereas whites received freedom
Oppression still occurred on a socially, politically, economical, and educational areas. (Washington, n.d.). Although 1870 the 15 Amendment gave black men the right to vote, white southerners found ways to deter them with the poll tax, literacy test and Grandfather clause. (Voting Rights Act, n.d) It wasn’t until August 6, 1965, The Voting Rights Act, was signed into effect by President Lyndon Johnson, the goal of this law was to “overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote”. (Voting Rights Act, n.d) Educational opportunities were not available to most young black children (Washington, n.d.). Black children are offended made to work rather than to go to school, in the south where the economy depended on cotton, which black labors were the driving force. (Washington, n.d.) One of the first acts of desegregation came from Brown v. Board of Education in which it was decided that it was unconstitutional to have “separate but equal” public schools. (Brown v. Board of Education, n.d). December 1, 1955, an African American women named Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move from her seat on the bus, for a white man. Rosa Parks was a courageous woman and the catalyst for ruling that segregation on transportation is unconstitutional, which happened November 1956. (Kira Albin, ND) Public Law 88-352 was passed by congress in 1964, which
Martin Luther King Jr., the man who gave the famous speech called “I Have a Dream”, has had childhood experiences that led up to him wanting to end segregation forever. Three experiences through the childhood of Martin Luther that shaped his beliefs and actions as an adult were two sons of a white neighborhood storekeeper stopped playing with him, when his mom told him that he was just as good as everyone else, and on his way home from a statewide competition for school. Whether the causes were good or bad, the effects were worth it because they changed segregation forever.
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...