Racism in the American Society in the 1920s
Black people have always been a part of America's history. They were
brought to America in the seventeenth century as slaves by white
settlers. Slavery ended by the nineteenth century, and by this time
there were more black Americans than white Americans in the southern
states. However, Blacks always had a tough time, this is due to the
stereotypical view that the people had of them. The whites believed
that the Blacks were primitive, illiterate and criminals. However,
this view was not true, a good example would be Paul Robeson who was
the son of a former slave and passed his law exams with honours from
Columbia University in 1923. White governments feared that the Blacks
would take power, and so introduced many laws which took away their
freedom (they were not given Civil rights). A good example here is the
Jim Crow laws in the southern states which promised that Blacks should
be 'separate but equal.' This actually meant that at railway stations,
bus stops and even drinking fountains Blacks could not mix with
Whites. They were also denied access to decent jobs, to worthwhile
education and the right to vote. Also, they suffered great poverty
well into the twentieth century.
It may seem that this was already a great oppression against the Black
Americans, yet White supremacist organisations such as the Ku Klux
Klan that had faded away in the late nineteenth century, had suddenly
reappeared to abuse and in some cases, murder Blacks. The Klan became
a powerful political force in the 1920s. It used parades, beatings,
lynching and other violent methods to intimidate Blacks. It also
attacke...
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...l tension. Many of them
were better educated, more militant and prouder of their colour than
the newly arrived Blacks from the south.
To conclude, I believe that American society was very racist in the
1920s. This started off with the Jim Crow Laws in the southern states
and then the 'resurrection' of the Ku Klux Klan. The treatment towards
the Black American degraded at a very fast rate and so they decided to
move to the northern states where there was a less concentration of
them. However, the Americans there were racist as well and the police
and courts didn't do anything about it as they too were racist. Even
though treatment towards Blacks slightly improved due to organisations
such as the UNIA, overall, they were seen as 'an inferior race' and it
would be a while until treatment towards Blacks greatly improved.
During the four decades following reconstruction, the position of the Negro in America steadily deteriorated. The hopes and aspirations of the freedmen for full citizenship rights were shattered after the federal government betrayed the Negro and restored white supremacist control to the South. Blacks were left at the mercy of ex-slaveholders and former Confederates, as the United States government adopted a laissez-faire policy regarding the “Negro problem” in the South. The era of Jim Crow brought to the American Negro disfranchisement, social, educational, and occupational discrimination, mass mob violence, murder, and lynching. Under a sort of peonage, black people were deprived of their civil and human rights and reduced to a status of quasi-slavery or “second-class” citizenship. Strict legal segregation of public facilities in the southern states was strengthened in 1896 by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. Racists, northern and southern, proclaimed that the Negro was subhuman, barbaric, immoral, and innately inferior, physically and intellectually, to whites—totally incapable of functioning as an equal in white civilization.
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
During the 1980's southern blacks from the United States dedicated to migrate to the north with the belief that the north had more opportunities and advantages blacks. Although, Frederick Douglas and Booker T. Washington opposed a migration to the north, millions of blacks migrated northward. The industries for the blacks migrating t o the north was what Douglas and Washington feared, black northern workers being placed in the same situation prior to their movement. Blacks were going to experience the same obstacles and disadvantages as they had in the south just with different situations. Northern blacks were going to experience prejudice, riots and murdering.
There have been traces of racism throughout America since the country was founded. Blacks, along with other races, were constantly fighting to be treated equally. Even though the slaves were freed in 1863, they still faced many racial and prejudice issues. However, in the early 1900s, it seemed as if African Americans were flourishing in the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The thought of African Americans prospering disgusted most whites to the point they wanted to do something about it. These thoughts and actions caused a horrific event known as Tulsa Race Riots that not only affected everyone in the time period, but will continue to affect us and live in our memory.
The Untied States of America was built on the exploitation of others and the expansion of foreign lands. Anglo-Saxon superiority and their successive impact on governing policies and strong domination throughout every social institution in the nation allowed discrimination to prevail. Scientific Racism reached new heights of justification towards slavery, the massive eradication of the Native people, colonialism and daily occurrences of unequal behaviors and treatments towards colored people. The strong presence of polygenesis helped spur along and justify racism; the idea that all non whites were groups of individuals who ultimately came from another type of species supporting the idea that Blacks, Natives and other colored people were not ‘real’ human beings. Traditions, legislation, domination and acceptance of such social norms allow racism to be principal whether it was apparent through slavery or hidden in new laws and policies to come. Every aspect of a colored person’s life was affected upon, Education, economic status, environmental location and political rights. Those who had the power within the court system followed the Anglo-Saxon ways, making any change difficult and time consuming to come across.
In the late 1800's, more and more blacks became victims of lynchings and Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks. To reduce racial conflicts, I advised blacks to stop demanding equal rights and to simply get along with whites. I urged whites to give black better jobs.
This paper’s purpose is to elaborate on how racism and the “American Dream” have helped shape United States history from 1492 and 1877. First, this paper intends to define racism and the “American Dream”; second explain the historical origins of these ideas and, third, describe how they helped shape the United States history from 1492 to 1877. In conclusion this paper will discuss how studying history helps us understand the present “state of beings.”
While we all would agree that racism is immoral and has no place in a modern society, that was not the case in the U.S. in the 1940s. At the time African Americans were treated as second-class citizens, it was made near-impossible for them to vote, and they were discriminated in many ways including in education, socially and in employment. It was a time in which segregation and racism perforated the laws and society, a time in which African Americans were “separate but equal,” segregation was legal and in full force. Apartheid was also everywhere from the books to in society. Blacks were not truly seen as equal as they were seen the the lesser of the two and it very much felt that way. Blacks were oppressed in many ways including having unreachable requirements to vote, such regulations included literacy tests, poll taxes, and elaborate registration systems, but it only started there.
After the emancipation of slaves in 1862, the status of African-Americans in post civil war America up until the beginning of the twentieth century did not go through a great deal of change. Much legislation was passed to help blacks in this period. The Civil Rights act of 1875 prohibited segregation in public facilities and various government amendments gave African-Americans even more guaranteed rights. Even with this government legislation, the newly dubbed 'freedmen' were still discriminated against by most people and, ironically, they were soon to be restricted and segregated once again under government rulings in important court cases of the era.
Racism (n): the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other race (Wordnet search, 1), a controversial topic in today’s society, a subject that many people try to sweep under the rug, but yet a detrimental problem that has been present in America since the colonial era. Will this dilemma come to a halt? Can all Americans see each other as equals despite their skin color and nationality; and what role has it played in past generations versus today’s generations and how will it affect our future? Has this on going way of thinking gotten better or worse? These are questions raised when many think about the subject; especially members of American ethnic groups and backgrounds, because most have dealt with racial discrimination in their life time.
This is known as the Reconstruction Era. As the federal troops withdrew from the territory, it was left in the hands of white rule once again. This led to a set of laws meant to create a distinct separation amongst black and white yet again, taking away most of the rights that were given to blacks during the Reconstruction Era. This set of laws being called “Jim Crow”. Though seemingly rigid and complete, Jim Crow laws did not account for all of the discrimination blacks suffered. Unwritten rules barred blacks from white jobs in New York and kept them out of white stores in Los Angeles. Humiliation was about the best treatment blacks that broke such rules could hope for. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which revived in 1915, used venom and violence to keep blacks “in their place”(crfusa.org). This type of hate and discontent for blacks thrived during World War I. Despite having more than 360,000 black men serve in the Armed Forces for the United States during the war, a serious and major race riot in Chicago among 24 others in the country is what they walked back into. Black veterans were being lynched in uniform by white mobs. In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded and gave colored people a voice, a way to fight back. Although they drew support from both blacks and whites, not much changed the “efficiency” of segregation for the next 30 years. By 1944, a Swede visiting the South pronounced segregation so complete that whites did not see blacks except when being served by them (crf-usa.org). It wasn’t until the second World War, when a bigger and more sinister foe, embodied the same ideals as Jim Crow to create a “master race”. It was in Hitler’s presence that the United Nations delegates, shocked, wrote home about the heinous practices of
After the war, issues of race weren't ignored. Black men had come back from a war were they were treated like men. They still weren't treated as equally as whites, but they were treated better during the war than they were back home where they were treated like objects. This gave them more motivation to demand equality when they returned. But after the war, white hostility towards blacks increased. This became a dichotomy when there was competition for low wage jobs between the blacks and whites. There was also black encroachment into white neighborhoods. The whites d...
Although racism seemed to be lower in Harlem and the Northern states, for many Blacks racism was at an all time high. The Ku Klux Klan reached membership of astronomical proportions. They marched in Washington DC and handed out membership cards bashing minorities. Less educated Blacks, or those who couldn’t make it to Harlem, were often deemed ignorant. There was a barrier built between those Blacks with an education, and those without.
Racism is the mistreatment of a group of people on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, place of origin, or ancestry. The term racism may also denote a blind and unreasoning hatred, envy, or prejudice (Dimensions of Racism). Racism has had a strong effect on society. Despite the many efforts made to alleviate racism, what is the future of African Americans' Racism's long history, important leaders, current status, and future outlook will be the main factors in determining how to combat racism. Racism is still present in many societies, although many people are doing their best to put an end to racism and its somewhat tragic ordeals.
By 1875, both the North and the South of America were prepared to abandon its commitment to equality for all citizens regardless of race. Emancipation was lost and the once popular support for Reconstruction was fading; White Southerners despised of this whilst white Northerners grew tired of its enormous cost. Almost instantly, notorious societies began appearing especially in the South, where citizens were devoted to restoring the white supremacy in politics and social life as seen before the Civil War. The rebirth of white supremacy in the South, particularly the Ku Klux Klan, was accompanied by the increase of enforced racial segregation under Jim Crow laws which legally segregated blacks and whites in virtually all public places. By 1885 essentially all the Southern states now had officially segregated public schools. Moreover, in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson established the infamous doctrine of “separate but equal” which would go on to define racial relations. “Slavery is abolished; but the ordinances of police enacted to uphold slavery have n...