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Civil Rights/Secret Life of Bees

Decent Essays

Bridget Baker
Mrs. McQuade
Period 2
4/10/12
Racial Discrimination and Segregation In 1619 the very first African Americans arrived in America, coming over for the purpose of forced slavery. It’s been nearly four hundred years since then and African Americans are still not treated completely equal. But throughout the years major steps towards equality have been made and as a whole the United States is close to reaching this goal. The first key action taken was abolishing slavery in 1865, but African Americans didn’t start gaining equal rights until 1955 during the Civil Rights Movement. The African American Civil Rights Movement aimed to eliminate all racial discrimination and segregation in America and demonstrated throughout Sue …show more content…

Next, Lily finds herself in the house of three African American sisters, seeking a place to live her. While contemplating lettering her stay, one of the sisters stress, “But she’s white… “ (Kidd 87). Though it seems as if it’s the white girl being discriminated against, but in reality blacks know the trouble that this gives themselves and how much trouble they could get in for this. The integration of blacks and whites was not only rare because it was looked down upon, but also because consequences would be given. Lily grows more than a friendship with a young African American and regardless of their feelings it’s nearly impossible for them to become anything more because of the fear of him getting in trouble for it. He explains this to her as, “Lily, I like you better than any girl I’ve ever known, but you have to understand, there are people who would kill boys like me for even looking at girls like you,” (135). Even those whites willing to integrate could not do it by themselves and during the Civil Rights Movement it brought everyone together willing to desegregate races. It was not immediate, but racial discrimination and segregation have extremely lessoned. From the beginning of America an ongoing battle with African American discrimination has occurred. In the Declaration of Independence written in 1776 it

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