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The role American women played in the civil rights movement
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In the history of America, Black American experience more disadvantage than any other races. Back in the days when slavery was acceptable by the society, Black American experienced the worst situation. Black Americans have no dignity and right over their live. Prejudices and discriminations against Black Americans were intense and the police and white Americans were at the same side to suppress Black Americans’ freedom and human rights. Those extreme circumstances left Black American only two choices: to be the oppressed for the rest of their life or stand up and fight for freedom, equality and human right. Over the years of Black freedom movement, many successful and influential Black leaders have raise from the struggle and helped rebuild the confidence of the oppressed. However, the fight didn’t end there, many of them still stuck in the old stereotypes and expectation of the society, especially African American women.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
Slave insurrection occurred in a multitude of ways. Slaves practiced everyday resistance as well as planned and executed more elaborate forms of resistance. One form of resistance was strikes. During a strike Negros would flee to the swamps or forests and send back word that they would return if their demands were made. Demands would often include food, clothes, fewer beatings, shorter hours, or a new overseer. If demands were met they would return. However during the Civil War the demand of payment of wages. During this era they won “lifting themselves by their own bootstraps from chattels to wage workers”.3
After a war that claimed the lives of more men than that of all other wars combined, much of the country was left in ruins, literally and figuratively. Dozens of towns in the South had been burned to the ground. Meanwhile, the relations between the North and South had crumbled to pieces. Something needed to be done so that the country could once again be the United States of America, not the Divided States of America. The years from 1865 to 1877 were a time of rebuilding – the broken communities and the broken relations. This time period was known as Reconstruction. Reconstruction was a failure on the basis that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments that were passed should have given protection and freedom to the African American people, instead, it actually hurt them because the laws were not enforced, and eventually lead to the organization of white supremacy terrorist groups.
Carter G. Woodson: Negro Orators ansd Their Orations (New York, NY, 1925) and The Mind of the Negro (Washington, DC., 1926).
The Civil Rights Movement had a lot going on between 1954 and 1964. While there were some successful aspects of the movement, there were some failures as well. The mixture of successes and failures led to the extension of the movement and eventually a more equal American society.
In the period after Reconstruction the position of African Americans in southern American society steadily deteriorated. After 1877 the possibilities of advancements for African Americans disappeared almost completely. African Americans experienced a loss of voting rights and political power created by methods of terrorization such as lynching. The remaining political and economic gains that were made during reconstruction were eventually whittled away by Southern legislation. By the 1900s African Americans had almost no access to political, social, or economic power. Shortly after this Jim Crow laws began to emerge, segregating blacks and whites. This dramatic transition from African American power to powerlessness after reconstruction gave birth to two important leaders in the African American community, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Although these two remarkable men were both in search of a common goal, their roads leading to this goal were significantly different. This is most evident in the two most important documents of the men’s careers: Booker T. Washington’s, “1895 Atlanta Exposition Speech” and W.E.B. DuBois’ response to this, “The Souls of Black Folks.” These two men were both dedicated to solving the difficult problems African Americans experienced in the post reconstruction south. Both DuBois and Washington wanted economic prosperity for African Americans but they differed on what would be done to achieve this. Both men focused on education as a key to the improvement of black life but they differed on the form education should take. The true difference in these men’s extremely different routes to better the lives of African Americans after reconstruction was a product of their extremely different backgrounds. In this essay I will examine the documents, “1895 Atlanta Exposition Speech” by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois’, “The Souls of Black Folks” in order to determine the paths that each of these men took towards the advancement of African Americans, and the reasons behind these methods.
When people think about organizations, leaders, activist, and world changers often times they do not correlate these titles and positions with women, let alone black women. When we think of social resistance movements and the leaders who operate the movements we often think of men. Many people in society think that a man is needed to construct, lead and run a social movement so that it can be affected enough to make a significant change. Stereotypical gender roles are the reason that many of us do not often think of women when we think about social resistance movements. However, African American women played a vital role in their organizations, they were powerful activist and they were adamant about addressing the many issues that black women face in society.
Harriet Tubman once said, I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other. Throughout history the African American culture has constantly been fighting for rights and equality. But in doing so has been denied it. With this happening more and more over the years it seems to have caused them more than just physical pain when violence is added to the equation. It has caused PTSD. The African American community suffers from PTSD due to Racism, what is considered as today’s “lynchings”, and Police Brutality.
In the 1940s, African Americans were facing the problem of discrimination. They fought to receive the rights that all Americans were given through the United States Constitution. They were being treated unfairly in society. Their education, jobs, transportation, and more were inferior to a white citizen’s. With the end of slavery and the creation of the Fourteenth Amendment, African Americans were theoretically given their freedom like every other American. The way they were treated denied them these rights that they thought they would obtain. Through the efforts of white bigots and the biased government, African Americans were segregated from the free lives of the white civilian. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans faced discrimination
African- Americans have a long and strenuous history in the United States. Even though today, our country seems for the most part, free of racial bias, this was not always the case. African- Americans were brought to this country to be sold and used as slaves. They endured horrible working conditions, and an even harder lifestyle that consisted of being treated like property instead of actual human beings. It was not until after the Civil War; the implementation of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865, that African- Americans were legally freed of their duty to slavery. However, even after they were freed, life was not easy and they did not possess all the same freedoms as white Americans. This period from 1865 to 1903 was the objective for W.E.B' Du Bois to write his book, The Souls of Black Folk, which focuses on the experiences of African- Americans after they were granted freedom.
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,
When talking about the history of African-Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, two notable names cannot be left out; Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois. They were both African-American leaders in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s, fighting for social justice, education and civil rights for slaves, and both stressed education. This was a time when blacks were segregated and discriminated against. Both these men had a vision to free blacks from this oppression. While they came from different backgrounds, Washington coming from a plantation in Virginia where he was a slave, and Du Bois coming from a free home in Massachusetts, they both experienced the heavy oppression blacks were under in this Post-Civil War society. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois were both pioneers in striving to obtain equality for blacks, yet their ways of achieving this equality were completely different. W.E.B Du Bois is the more celebrated figure today since he had the better method because it didn’t give the whites any power, and his method was intended to achieve a more noble goal than Washington’s.
Shortly after Rachel was written in 1916, the New Negro Movement began to gain traction in the African American community. This broad cultural movement focused on promoting a public image of African Americans as industrious, urban, independent, and distinct from the subservient and illiterate “Old Negro” of the rural South. Unlike his predecessor, the New Negro was self-sufficient, intellectually sophisticated, creative, knowledgeable and proud of his racial heritage (Krasner, Beautiful Pageant 140). While these concepts had been promoted since the turn of the century, it was not until 1917-1918 that they began to crystalize as a concerted effort among African American intellectuals. These men actively supported the creation of black drama because they recognized that “At a time when African Americans had virtually no political recourse, their voice could best be heard through…a creative and humanistic effort to achieve the goal of civil rights by producing positive images of African Americans and promoting activism through art” (“New Negro Movement” 926). The New Negros therefore shared the same overall goal as black intellectuals such as DuBois, but believed that black artists should focus on presenting the reality and beauty of the “black human experience” instead of an idealized vision of what life should be. Ultimately, the transition from “political” art to that which held creativity in high esteem was complex and divisive. Fortunately, just as Dubois emerged as the primary advocate of the former Political Theatre, so too would Alain Locke help guide the New Negros to support the idea of Art Theatre.
Nearly three centuries ago, black men and women from Africa were brought to America and put into slavery. They were treated more cruelly in the United States than in any other country that had practiced slavery. African Americans didn’t gain their freedom until after the Civil War, nearly one-hundred years later. Even though African Americans were freed and the constitution was amended to guarantee racial equality, they were still not treated the same as whites and were thought of as second class citizens. One man had the right idea on how to change America, Martin Luther King Jr. had the best philosophy for advancing civil rights, he preached nonviolence to express the need for change in America and he united both African Americans and whites together to fight for economic and social equality.
Diversity, we define this term today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America; in fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race. It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s during the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place yet, it is the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools. Integration in white schools played a major role in the battle for Civil Rights in the South, upon the coming of independence for all African American people in the United States after a series of tribulations and loss of hope.