Many people were threatened, beaten and harassed by a group known as Ku Klux Klan trying to fight for what was right like voting privilege. Although, they struggled to get their voice heard it was worth the probable cause even if that meant putting their life in danger. The South did not come easy especially for minorities living in America like Edesha said, Whites had sworn since before reconstruction that we blacks would not only know our place but stay in it forever. This showed that after slavery was abolished some white people did not want to make a change in society under the law some whites still wanted to be separated from all blacks and those who did not fit their description. It seems like the whites were afraid that African Americans would someday take over and treat them the same way they were being treated, and that was mentally, verbally, and physically abuse just cause of their skin color and ethnicity.
They needed African Americans to be dependent upon them and they still viewed them as subhuman. White supremacists were not going to accept them as citizen no matter what the law said. If need be they would manipulate the laws to work in their favor or circumvent the law altogether. Fear of blacks began to resonate after the loss of the Civil War. They could no longer legal keep the black population in chains and under submission; therefore they would need to keep them in chains in a metaphorical sense.
In the beginning of the story, the narrator’s grandfather says that the only way to make racism become extinct that African Americans should be overly nice to whites. The Exhorter named Ras had different beliefs of the blacks rising up to the whites and take power from the whites. Even though these thoughts come from the black community to take the freedom from the whites, the stories reveals that the are just as dangerous as the whites being racist. The narrator has such a hard time throughout the whole story exploring his identity. While doing so, it demonstrates how so many blacks are betraying their race because the have such a hard time dealing with it.
They also believed that judges were very racist. One of the main problems though was the fact that blacks couldn’t vote unless they took an IQ test, which the whites made impossible to complete. Without the vote, blacks couldn’t change the racist sheriffs, politicians, police officers etc. In 1960’s, blacks began to disagree among themselves about the best ways to gain more civil rights. Dr. Martin Luther King started to find himself in a position where he no longer had the control that he used to over the black’s civil rights movement and also found that his idea of bringing the changes peacefully falling away beneath his feet.
However, just because of the new amendment it was not going to be taken seriously by citizens because they did not change their beliefs. The controversy that the blacks faced when they were newly emancipated was very violent because they did not have the respect of the whites and they would not be treated equally. To continue, the first state to create laws governing the issue of free blacks and restricting what they could do in everyday life was Mississippi. They wanted to restrict what they could do... ... middle of paper ... ...eliefs on how blacks are received. The Emancipation Proclamation was a major turning point in our country’s modern history, but reconstruction caused major conflicts that to many years to resolve.
They were both afraid of what the other might do and because of it, they both suffered. This still happens today like how George Zimmerman was accused of killing Trayvon Martin because he was not the right color. Albeit barbaric, any offense between Whites and African Americans typically is blamed on race. Zimmerman killed Martin because he was afraid of what might have happened. It was not a black and white issue, it goes deeper into thinking that the long lasting hatred between Whites and African Americans is bound to cause issues until the two can reach an understanding.
Black children were separated from whites from the beginning, thus making the blacks hate whites, as they grew older. Whites did not want blacks to feel in any way equal to them. And from the book, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, I can better understand this issue.
Unfortunately, whites did not believe blacks should be allowed to vote in an election or receive an education. In fact, whites did everything they possibly could to insure blacks did not receive an education or get to vote. Ames decided that if he could become governor of Mississippi, he could try to put a stop to the way whites treated blacks and enforce the laws that had been set. Ames set forth and ran for governor of Mississippi to put his plan into action. Furthermore, Ames showed his support of blacks through the speeches he made before the governor election took place.
Stripping them from their legal right to vote, no matter what circumstances money wise they were in. Due to “the egalitarian movement to remove property qualifications” (Hine 174) the disfranchisement began. According to white race voters the allowing of the black race vote would corrupt the system. Since they “would be encouraged to try to mix socially with white people” (Hine 174). Due to that there was the threat that the voting of the black race would position them in the election to office.
Nevertheless, many eligible black citizens were prevented from voting; especially in the Southern states of America. Long-standing Southern congressmen exploited their authority to halt legislation that would help blacks. The power of the state governments allowed the continuation of white supremacy and discrimination; the state governments controlled education, transportation and law enforcement. As a result, enfranchisement did not bring greater equality to the black community in America. However, external events such as the two World Wars and the Great Depression encouraged greater equality between blacks and whites.