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Black Rights - Struggle for Racial Equality in Post War America

Decent Essays
Write a full account on the struggle for racial equality in post war America.

During World War II, around one million black men served in the army. They were in different units to the white men. Riots and fights occurred when black men from northern America had to face the discrimination in the south during training. This lessoned peoples opinion of them, in a prejudice way. They were never allowed to join the Marines or the Air Corps, but this changed for the first time during the war due to the military needs. After the war, blacks began to challenge their status as second-class citizens. After their country fighting Nazi Germany, who killed six million Jews, and a fascist Italy, the people of America began to question the racism and
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A similar incident happened when a young man tried to enrol for the University of Mississippi, an all white university. An angry mob and the governor of Mississippi tried to stop him. The case was brought to court by the NAACP and won the right for him to enrol. President Kennedy also sent troops in to protect the young man when he was enrolling but riots broke out ending in 375 people injured and two dead. The rest of the state universities in the south were slowly desegregated.

In the north, blacks and whites attended different schools because they lived in different parts of the city or state. The laws to desegregate the schools were not just for the south. So they brought in bussing. This meant that black children could get the bus to white schools that had been desegregated so there was a racial balance in the schools. A lot of northern cities resisted this court order, and some cities even fire-bombed the buses. To get around these laws, many white people sent their children to private schools. Most black children stayed in public schools due to lack of money.

There wasn 't just racial segregation in schools. Restaurants and buses are just a couple of the other places where racial segregation occurred. Racial segregation on public transport was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. This meant that blacks had to sit at the back of the bus, whites at the front. A black person had to give up his seat if
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