American Dilemma Summary

Civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph saw the unique situation created by World War II and the acute need for workers as an opportunity to demand equality. In 1941 Randolph threatened President Roosevelt with a 100,000-person march on Washington, D.C., to protest job discrimination. In response, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, prohibiting discrimination in defense jobs or the government.

The 1940s represent a decade of turmoil for the United States in general. Perhaps no group of people struggled more during that time period, however, than African Americans. With racial segregation prevalent, particularly in the South, opportunity was lacking for African-Americans. However, Ralph Ellison suggests in “Battle Royal” that due to the lack of racial unity among black men as well as a certain amount of naiveté, black men prevented themselves from succeeding more so than their white oppressors.

African Americans had little opportunity to better themselves economically. Some laws prohibited them from teaching and from entering certain other businesses and professions. Large numbers of blacks had to take low-paying jobs as farm hands or as servants for white employers. Many others were forced to become sharecroppers or tenant framers. They rented small plots of land and paid the rent with money earned from the crops. Struggling to survive, many ran up huge debts to their white landlords or the town merchants. Fortunately, there were rays of sunshine forcing their way through this cloudy time.

Many ignorant people assume that the living conditions of African Americans during slavery and desegregation were not as harsh as they are made out to be. However, autobiographies of African Americans that were alive during that time prove otherwise. If people continue to believe that African Americans did not live a tough life during slavery and desegregation, America will be covering up its past and directly contributing to the further discrimination of the African American people. Texts such as Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of my Life display how difficult growing up as an African American was during this time by providing insight into the atrocities of slave labor and pimping.

Plight of the African Americans After Reconstruction in Neil McMillen’s Book, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow

This source is valuable because it provides historians with evidence that shows how the New Deal actually made employment much more difficult for African Americans. For example, the NIRA led to many blacks losing jobs, employment rates were lower than ever due to the tripling of Federal taxes, and many black sharecroppers faced numerous difficulties.as a result of various New Deal programs. The value of this source is limited because the author is writing for a libertarian organization, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a democrat. Also, the author does not include any personal account from African Americans that suffered the effects of the New Deal.

A critical moment in the advancement of black political activism came in 1941 when social equality advocates, drove by A. Philip Randolph, threatened to walk on Washington, DC, to challenge victimization blacks in the war business. President Roosevelt assented to act just grudgingly, when his endeavors to discourage black pioneers from energetically challenging his inaction had been totally depleted. On June 25, 1941, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which announced full investment in the national barrier program by all natives of the United States, paying little heed to race, ideology, color, or national origin, taking into account the firm conviction that the majority rule lifestyle inside of the Nation can be shielded effectively just with the help and backing of all gatherings inside of its outskirts. The request obligated that the government, unions, and guard commercial ventures accommodate the full and fair cooperation of all workers. The President proposed to modify black dissent notwithstanding plausible U.S. mediation in World War II, yet in issuing his official request, he propelled black activists, who saw it, and generally depicted it, as a point of reference triumph in bowing the federal government to their

The story of Clyde Ross and Lawndale is just one example of the obstacles faced by blacks even after slavery was abolished. It is clear that it was specifically black families that were targeted by contract sellers and that were bypassed by the FHA to be given insurance. The appearance of equality overshadowed the reality of the situation for blacks, which was that they were frequently exploited and contained in neighborhoods that did not receive governmental assistance, while whites were benefitting from the new governmental agencies while many of them simultaneously

Daryl Michael Scott argues that African Americans lived a damaged life in the post-World War II era and E Franklin Frazier’s “Black Bourgeoisie” shows exactly how damaging it was. The black bourgeoisie were middle class African American’s who went through many extremes to dissociate themselves as blacks and “be accepted as anything other than African American” (734). There were many reasons why the black bourgeoisie were damaged, but the main reasons why their social and psychological lives were damaged were because of four categorical problems. The black bourgeoisie lived in oppression, they lived with many insecurities and frustrations, developed self-hatred and feelings of guilt, and were unfortunately physically and mentally delusional. These were the main ideas Frazier pointed out in his work “Black Bourgeoisie.”

Imagine yourself, a proud American starting another chapter in life where your desires and aspirations ahead of you. Then all of sudden undergo dizziness and then wakes up to a time in your ancestry encompassing not a pleasing sight. You walk around the new surroundings, seeking for a form of life to tell you where you are. When revealed to you where and WHEN you landed, your heart races and plummets to the floor at the same time. The one word and time where evil stands necessary and idea of dehumanization is afoot. Slavery: a segment in time surrounding bondage of African slaves under the societal and political supremacy of European America. Yet you pull yourself together, try to adapt to the ways of living hoping to go back to the present. As you learn to know your place in race and gender, you start to realize that your life can be at stake. The gender roles for white and black made an impact distinctively to function in a society on the matter assuring right and just. In the 19th century, America’s antebellum slave society considered toward white Americans as a way of life, but clearly an inhumane society in absolute existence. The existence of the antebellum south.

Nick Foley, in The White Scourge (1997) illustrates an life in the south in such a manner that people of color, oppressed under loopholes in the law, must do what is necessary to feed and shelter their family. After the American Civil War, the life of farming provided a sense of security for the people of the South. Even as the Great Depression occurred, the thought that one could put in his share of work on the farm land created the hope, “the promise,” that one’s family would eventually own their own farmland. (Foley 163) However, after President Franklin Roosevelt enacted the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, the mechanization of farming began. The resulting reduction in supply and rise in prices of certain commodities led to the mechanization

A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, proposed a large scale March on Washington, in hopes to scare the government into giving more working rights, and be able to fight for their country. Randolph used the march as a scare tactic to get what he wanted. He proclaimed that “[The Government] will never give the Negro justice until they see masses--ten, twenty, fifty thousand Negroes on the White House lawn!” Randolph wanted this to be seen from around America and would “Shake up white America.” Randolph met with FDR in June of 1941 and presented his program from his Why Should We March paper. These were eight demands regarding national unity, due process, desegregation, full funding to the FEPC, and ability to join the government. In Randolph 's Why Should We March he gives many great reasons as to why the African Americans should gather to fight for these demands. The line that stands out most to me is the “What have Negroes

Slavery of blacks in United States of America have enormously shaped and impacted the racial inequalities today. “Black Consciousness… seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from “normal” which is white” (Biko 49). Although, slaves were treated as inferior to the whites, these racial ideologies which

Throughout the reign of Southern slavery, African Americans of all genders and ages were considered property, and their lives were valued only by the price their owner put on their labor. Southern America’s economy plummeted

“the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination”