Toward Freedom and Equality

Have you seen a book called Roots? If you have read it, you must be impressed by the miserable life of the black slaves which is described vividly in the novel. With the increasing demand for Southern cotton industry, many people from Africa were bought to the New World against their will to work as forced laborers. These African men, women and children were shipped in foul-smelling and crowded conditions to start their long and bitter slavery life. Meanwhile, it also initiated the search for freedom and equality.

For a long period of time the black slaves were controlled by several brutal means. However, forced to work for long hours, they managed to establish their own churches, develop their own music. And they also expressed their desire for freedom in some way such as "run-away", but such resistance was always brutally broken down.

For the black Africans, the first triumph in the search for freedom and equality happened in 1865. It was in that year that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution made the abolition of the slave system official. Prior to this event, the conflict over slavery between the Southern and Northern states eventually drove the nation to the Civil War in 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation made by President Lincon and the Northern states, with the aid of the black volunteers, won the victory and freed the slaves.

With the passage of time, however, the black people gradually realized that the abolition of the slavery didn't bring them equal treatment. A civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, describes the situation in his famous speech: ."..Negro is not free. The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination...." Most blacks in the South could not eat at some eating places. There were separate areas for black people and white people in public places. And there were also separate schools for black children and white children. Racial separation was a part of institutions at that time.

In the 20th century, black people dissatisfied with such treatment and began to struggle for the equal rights. In 1954, they scored another triumph. The famous cases, known as Brown versus the Board of Education, started the slow process towards desegregation. The Rev. Brown and some other black parents wanted to send their children to the school near their homes. But the state court confirmed the rule of "separated but equal" and prevented their children from attending the school nearby.