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African Americans fight for equality
Civil rights in the 1950
1950s civil rights
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In the years immediately after World War II the United States dominated global affairs, but gradually Americans began to question dominant assumptions about American Life. The Cold War was considered the most important political issue of the early postwar period. The war brought the return of prosperity, however African Americans became increasingly fidgety in the postwar years. This act can be due to the fact that during the war they had challenged discrimination in the military services and in the work force, yet they had made limited gains. In fact, blacks challenged discrimination in a variety of fields and struggled to succeed. Struggles that blacks faced during post WWII were centered in cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Little Rock,
Although they experienced many milestones from white supremacy while trying to achieve their goal they did not quit and fought back. In this essay, the journey of African Americans and their yearning for equality will be expressed through examples of strategies they used as well as the responses they received from whites such as violence and obstruction. Some key sources that will be used in order to provide the reader with full knowledge on how blacks solidified their goal of overturning the judicial doctrine, established in the court case Plessy v. Ferguson, and securing the right of desegregation. In the book, Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Beals Patillo provides a good emphasis on the hardships blacks faced from whites in school. Along with the readings: Birmingham’s Untouchables by Robin Kelley, Testing the Limits by Charles Payne, I wanted the Whole World to See by Ruth Feldstein, and We are in the Front Lines in the Battle for Democracy by James Wolfinger will be used to provide specific examples of the actions that had taken place during the post-WWII
Melba who is the main character as well as the narrator in the book displays conflicts she had faced due to the problem of racism in the early periods of desegregation. These conflicts encountered are shown throughout the attendance in an all white school known as Central High school. Melba is one of the Little Rock Nine who gave up their innocence of childhood in order to obtain success with integration. Although they were faced with hardships, the journey of these nine blacks in Central High School shows their determination as young people to make a change. One of the main themes expressed in the book was the idea of power shift. A basic understanding of power during this time in the segregated south was that white people were seen to be superior to blacks and hold all the power where blacks did not hold any. And due to the act of disobedience by the nine black children who entered into Little Rock High School threatened to change the way white segregationists exerted their power. It scared the whites. Whites would rely on the mobs of their people in order to overwhelm the black teenagers, however only to show that whites aren’t as strong as everyone thinks they are because they need more than one to do their “deed” of scaring blacks off. Yet, due to the advise of Melba’s Grandma India she taught her to not
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.
Before the Civil War, blacks suffered oppression: slaves to the white man and unable to prosper as individuals. However as Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, author of Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, explains, “After the Civil War blacks existed free to begin their own communities… and become members of the buying public” (29). With the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, and with the 14th Amendment, which established equal protection under the law for African Americans, the black community slowly saw improvements, including economic prosperity. However, even then, they confronted discrimination and humiliation. For instance, many “advertisers created campaigns [using] blacks in their advertisements but in demeaning postures that appealed to the white majority” not African Americans (29). The early 1960s marked a critical time for advancement; the Civil Rights Movement with its boycotts and marches demanded real equality. African American leaders called Jim Crow Laws into question and insisted on the integration of schools, businesses, and public transportation. As Brian L. Goff, Robert E. McCormick and Robert D. Tollinson explain in their piece, “Racial Integration as an Innovation: Empirical Evidence from Sports Leagues,” “the civil rights laws and court rulings in the 1950’s and 60’s are among the major changes in public policy that gradually led to a breakdown of Jim Crow rule in the American south” (16). This pivotal moment within American history provoked profound changes in the ways Americans interacted with each other.
Racism is an attribute that has often plagued all of American society’s existence. Whether it be the earliest examples of slavery that occurred in America, or the cases of racism that happens today, it has always been a problem. However, this does not mean that people’s overall opinions on racial topics have always stayed the same as prior years. This is especially notable in the 1994 memoir Warriors Don’t Cry. The memoir occurred in 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas and discusses the Melba Pattillo Beals attempt to integrate after the Brown vs. Board of Education court case. Finally, in Warriors Don’t Cry, Melba Pattillo Beals discusses the idea that freedom is achievable through conflicts involving her family, school life, and friends.
In the book Warriors Don’t Cry Melba wanted to integrate schools because she knew that if they did step up things would begin to change and white people would begin to accept black people as equals. Yes, there are things that were done to Melba and the rest of the kids that could be considered abuse but everyone involved knew it was for the greater good. Melba even makes it known she wants to be there from this quote, “This is going to work. It will take a lot more patience and more strength from me, but it’s going to work. It takes more time than I thought. But we’re going to have integration in Little Rock. (pg.161)” We can see that Melba wants to do whatever she can to get into Central High School and is willing to go the extra mile. Frankly if Melba didn’t stick it out racism might have gone on longer than expected. Melba even reflects on this, “But Grandma is right, if I don’t go back, they will think they have won. They will think they can use soldiers to frighten us, and we’ll always have to obey them. (pg.55-56)” So sending these kids into a place where they would be frightened and attacked was a necessary sacrifice that needed to be made in order for the elimination of
In the next few chapters she discusses how they were brought up to fear white people. The children in her family were always told that black people who resembled white people would live better in the world. Through her childhood she would learn that some of the benefits or being light in skin would be given to her.
During the 1940's, millions of African-Americans moved from the South to the North in search of industrial opportunities. As a result of this migration, a third of all black Americans lived outside the south by 1950.... ... middle of paper ... ... While the war changed the lives of every American, the most notable changes were in demographics, the labor force, economic prosperity and cultural trends.
Those studying the experience of African Americans in World War II consistently ask one central question: “Was World War II a turning point for African Americans?” In elaboration, does World War II symbolize a prolongation of policies of segregation and discrimination both on the home front and the war front, or does it represent the start of the Civil Rights Movement that brought racial equality? The data points to the war experience being a transition leading to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s.
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.
In September 1957, nine African American high school students set off to be the first African American students to desegregate the all white Central High School. The six agirls and the three boys were selected by their brightness and capability of ignoring threats of the white students at Central High. This was all part of the Little Rock school board’s plan to desegregate the city schools gradually, by starting with a small group of kids at a single high school. However, the plan turned out to be a lot more complex when Governor Orval Faubus decided not to let the nine enter the school.
Although the conclusion of the Civil War during the mid-1860s demolished the official practice of slavery, the oppression and exploitation of African Americans has continued. Although the rights and opportunities of African Americans were greatly improved during Reconstruction, cases such a 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson, which served as the legal basis for segregation, continue to diminish the recognized humanity of African Americans as equal people. Furthermore, the practice of the sharecropping system impoverished unemployed African Americans, recreating slavery. As economic and social conditions worsened, the civil rights movement began to emerge as the oppressed responded to their conditions, searching for equality and protected citizenship.With such goals in mind, associations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which came to the legal defense of African Americans and aided the march for civil rights reforms, emerged. By working against the laws restricting African Americans, the NAACP saw progress with the winning of cases like Brown v. Board of Education, which allowed the integration of public schools after its passing in 1954 and 1955. In the years following the reform instituted by the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the fervor of the civil rights movement increased; mass nonviolent protests against the unfair treatment of blacks became more frequent. New leaders, such as Martin Luther King, manifested themselves. The civil rights activists thus found themselves searching for the “noble dream” unconsciously conceived by the democratic ideals of the Founding Fathers to be instilled.
I will teach my students the power of not giving up on what they believe in. In this book Warrior Don’t Cry, we to not be afraid the resist the norm, if something is not right we need fight it and make it better. Melba and the other members of the Little Rock Nine was able to bring about change, they was able to shit the power of one group of people over another through resistance. Resistance don’t have to be violent, and can be peaceful. Melba grandma India teaches us all that you can get lot of things do with just passive resistance. Smiling in the face of your enemies at they tried to cause harm to you. Not only show them that you are strong enough to take anything they dish at you but also so you got character. Another lesson I will teach my students is being self-reliance. Melba and the other students had to rely on themselves to survive. They was force to go to school, surrounded by hostile and hateful people. They was also force to lose their friends from their old high school because their friends were afraid to be around them. The black students had to learn to rely more and more on themselves and not on the people around them like family and friends, because at the end of the day they had to protect
Prior to World War I there was much social, economic, and political inequality for African Americans. This made it difficult for African Americans to accept their own ethnicity and integrate with the rest of American society. By the end of World War II however African Americans had made great strides towards reaching complete equality, developing their culture, securing basic rights, and incorporating into American society.
Tragically, however, very few of these goals were achieved. It seems as if every time the African Americans manage to move one step closer to reaching true equality among the Southern whites, whether it be in a social, political, or economic fashion, the whites always react by committing violent acts against them. Initially, the Southern whites (in fear of black supremacy in Southern politics) fought to preserve the white supremacy Southern politics had always functioned by. This “ushered most African Americans to the margins of the southern political world” (Brinkley, 369). Secondly, African Americans struggled to survive once they were set free; they had nowhere to live and nothing to eat. Because of such reasons, most former slaves decided to remain living on their plantations as tenants, paying their tenancy by working the crop fields. Sadly, even this failed for the African Americans due to the birth of the crop-lien system. Lastly, the Southern whites counteracted the effects of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments by establishing the Jim Crow laws, which aided them with upholding, if not increasing, the steady level of segregation in the South. Ultimately, out of the very few accomplishments made by the African American population during and following the Era of Reconstruction, there existed one achievement significant enough to change the course of American history: the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. As a result of these amendments, “would one day serve as the basis for a “Second Reconstruction” that would renew the drive to bring freedom to all Americans” (Brinkley,
Inequality in the United States was present for a very long time. It wasn’t until essentially the 1960’s when blacks finally had all of their humane rights. It took many courageous and very charismatic leaders to achieve all the things colored people grasped during this time. In my essay today I will be talking about some of these extremely memorable and honorable events and people that transpired and why they are so significant.
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 ...