The Disadvantages Black Americans Faced in the Early Fifties

The Disadvantages Black Americans Faced in the Early Fifties

The Black community of America in the 1950's were living in a country

where deep seeded racist views were held above their heads by whites.

There was a clear divide between coloured groups, with whites taking

the vast majority of jobs, money and general luxuries. Whites had been

going through an economic boom during and before the 1950's. For

instance at the start of 1948 54% of white families owned a car, by

1956 this percentage on average had risen to a staggering 73%, this

increase of %19 in just 8 years. This was also mirrored in other

luxuries such as televisions, refrigerators and washing machines,

which were also appearing more and more widely in white families home.

The whites were in the middle of the "if you've got it, spend it"

regime of cultural life. If your neighbour has something you have to

have it, so the white's houses were getting more and more luxurious.

This was a stark contrast to what similar black families were going

through. 60% of black families were trying to live on incomes of less

than £2,000 a year. But the most worrying statistic was that 22% of

the black people lived below the national poverty line. But it wasn't

just money problems, it was also awful living conditions, being forced

into inner cities, turning them into ghetto's of un employment and

dirt ridden streets, John Kenneth Galbraith, a Harvard economics

professor described it as "badly paved, made hideous by litter,

blighted buildings, billboards, and posts of wire that should long

since have been put underground".

But not only were the blacks very hard done by when money came ...

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... against all he had achieved for

the black civil rights movement.

However in his absence the war for civil rights continued, still with

the peacefull and more violent protest methods. By the late 60's the

supreme court had had enough, and wanted all the problems to end, so

advocated "the civil rights bill" which decreed everyone was equal,

finally the black Americans had achieved there goal, racial equality.

Although racist views and deep rooted hatred in some cases is still

apparent even today, over 30 years later, the 1960's was a huge step

to racial equality, although bridges did need to be mended around the

world after opinions of the cause fell when violence was used what was

achieved in the 1960's in America gave all Black Americans hope for

the future, a future that looked so bleak before the movement began.