Essay Mat Johnson's Incognegro Analysis

The Civil War was fought over the “race problem,” to determine the place of African-Americans in America. The Union won the war and freed the slaves. However, when President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, a hopeful promise for freedom from oppression and slavery for African-Americans, he refrained from announcing the decades of hardship that would follow to obtaining the new won “freedom”. Over the course of nearly a century, African-Americans would be deprived and face adversity to their rights. They faced something perhaps worse than slavery; plagued with the threat of being lynched or beat for walking at the wrong place at the wrong time. Despite the addition of the 14th and

The 13th amendment abolished slavery and freed millions of African Americans. This was supposed to improve their lives and give them a new beginning. However, more than 30 years after the abolishment, their situation has not improved. Their right to vote was revoked in many southern states during the early 1890s. Less than 40% of black children were enrolled in schools in Georgia by 1880. Between 1880 and 1918, over 2400 African Americans were hanged. Africans had the lowest paying jobs and very few owned land. Jim Crow laws were established in many southern states to legalize segregation. Their situation was disastrous and wasn’t improving. Four respected spokespersons presented their ideas to fix this racial inequality crisis. The four courageous people who offered their alternatives were Ida B Wells, Booker T. Washington, Henry Turner and W.E.B Du Bois.

The 13th amendment has got to be one of the most important amendments from the reconstruction era. It not only freed slaves from slavery, but it was the beginning of a whole new world. Though racism and segregation was still an issue, African Americans were no longer anyone’s “property.”

Through the past century, the quest for racial equality has been a continuous trail of successes and milestones. From Abraham Lincoln’s views on slavery during the Civil War that lead to the creation of the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing over four million African slaves in 1863, to the iconic “I have a dream” speech from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963, not to mention that Barack Obama, the very first African-American president of the United States, was inaugurated in 2009.

One of the biggest problems Africans Americans faced in America is Segregation, discrimination, racism, prejudice, rebellion, religion, resistance, and protest. These problems have helped shape the Black struggle for justice. Their fight for justice marks a long sequence of events towards their freedom. Provisions of the Constitution affect the operation of government agencies and/or the latitude chief executives and legislatures in the creation and implementation of policies today. The rights and passage of Amendments granted to African Americans in the Constitution serve as a source of “first principles” governing the actions and policies of elected and appointed public servants across the United States. The 15th Amendment Equal Rights: Rights

Due to slave codes making it illegal for slaves to learn to read, southern’s wanted to keep their slaves uneducated. Many people believed that African Americans were not capable of socializing with regular society and should only be kept away at the house or fields working. Whites wanted to keep power over their slaves from the time they were born. The masters did not want the slaves to find out important details about themselves for several reasons. Some of the details included their parents or birthdate. As the slave children would grow older, the masters would keep them from reading and writing.

The United States of America is known as a place of God-given rights and equality for a diverse group of people. Since the founding of America, it was built off of the blood, sweat, and tears of immigrates. Yet, since the primeval years of this nation’s commencement, African American women rights have been adjusted or eliminated because of the pigmentation of their skin and has limited their right to exercise inalienable Rights taken for granted by even men of their own race and has set restrictions in society based on the color of their skin.

After the American Civil War (1861-1865), major changes which were crucial to the establishment of African Americans in the American society took place. Before the bloody war, slaves were comprised of thirteen percent of the total population of the United States. The treatments they receive from their masters ranged from generous to abusive. The issue of slavery was becoming more and more apparent in social, economic, and most importantly political aspects of the country. In fact, even before the war started, slavery was determined to be one of the main points of conflict between the Northern and the Southern states. After the war ended, various constitutional amendments were passed to end slavery and guaranteed the status of American citizenship to the former slaves and any other free African Americans. The amendments, which were accepted largely due to the influence of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on both the Northern and Southern states, would be the motivational catalyst for the Civil Rights movements and the African American’s rise to their deserved status in the United States.

Nearly a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in the south were still faced with innumerable injustices, including disenfranchisement, segregation, and violence. Jim Crow laws infringed on African Americans’ fundamental rights to a basic education, to suffrage, to serve on a jury, to enter certain shops, and even to use a public restroom. Throughout this time period, activists, African American and white alike, rallied for change using all methods possible: nonviolent protest, civil disobedience, and even violence in some cases. While it is most common to recall the achievements of men such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip

The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s was the final blow to institutional racism. People of color have been on a steady downfall since the days of race-based slavery. Barack Obama, a black man, to the highest political office in the United States is proof that we lived in a “Color Blind” society. Great progress has been made in achieving a fairer society. Alexander argues that this story largely misrepresents the conditions of poor and working class blacks today. “Nathaniel Bacon was a white property owner in Jamestown, Virginia who managed poor whites, indentured servants and blacks.” Slaves were in the lowest position they could possibly be in; even though the whites were free most of them lived in extreme poverty. Slaves were defined as three-fifths of a man not even considered a human being. After the death of slavery had been gone race still lived on , and is living on today. (Page 4; The Birth Of Slavery) Civil Rights Act of 1866 the thirteenth amendment abolished slavery, the fourteenth amendment “Prohibited states from denying citizens due process and; “equal protection of the laws”, the fifteenth amendment “Provided the right to vote should not be denied by anyone no matter what your race is”.

The matter of slavery played as a piece of the puzzle in the civil war. Southerners had a twisted way of viewing people with a darker skin tone of theirs and James Henry Hammond asserted that, “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life.” He went on to proclaim that, “Fortunately the South…found a race for this purpose. A race inferior to her own” [L]. Strongly disagreeing, Abolitionists in the North perceived the black people not an as inferior race but rather “entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man” [P]. Helping to flame these

At first many blacks in the U.S were slaves. They were not citizens and had no rights. It wasn’t until after the civil war that the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed. These three amendments abolished slavery, granted citizenship to former slaves, and gave black men voting rights. In the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court encouraged segregation by allowing “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites. However, new laws

Even before the foundation of America, slavery had already been established; and according to ushistory.org, Dutch traders brought the first permanent African Settlers in 1619. The constitution and bill of rights, written by James Madison and George Mason in 1791, was comprised in such a way that the core values of America would be preserved, while the semantics would be open to interpretation by the Supreme Court; which was established under the judiciary act of 1789 (billofrightsinstitute.org; supremecourt.gov). In the early stages of America, the “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were only appointed to a privileged few. Freedom and equality were only gained through perseverance and struggle; and figureheads like Abraham Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King fought for equality amongst all Americans. This paper will describe in brief institutional racism from WWII-1968; and the key Supreme Court rulings, people, and movements that have aided in dismantling

As one of the most ethnically diverse countries on the planet, the United States faces the unique challenge of allowing a multitude of different races, religions, and cultures to live peacefully and prosper every single day. With a revolutionized idea of human rights spreading like wildfire across the world, individuals and groups are standing up to fight for equality in growing numbers. Racial discrimination and oppression have been the ugly past of our country, but it is now all of our responsibilities to guarantee that it is not our legacy. Healing our morally damaged history takes a great deal of time and effort, starting with changes in our government such as new legislature, and finally in our social atmospheres. Already our government has made huge bounds towards equality, beginning with a multitude of laws and amendments that cement the ideals of equality into law. In recent years, establishing that all races have an equal opportunity to hold government office, which culminated with our first black president in 2008. These legislative types of change are easy to recognize and measure; social change, however, is entirely different in nature. It takes time, it’s difficult to force a person to change his or her beliefs. To promote this social change, our country has adopted a set of legal behaviors that are intended to restore the rights of minority groups in our country, but are in effect doing so at the expense of other’s rights. While attempting to fix the unfair

The 2012 historical drama entitled Lincoln highlights the significant occurrences throughout Abraham Lincoln’s presidency preluding to the passing of the thirteenth amendment and subsequently, his death in April of 1865. The film emphasizes the hardships and perseverance of African Americans in the 19th century as they struggled for their freedom and civil liberty. Abraham Lincoln’s persistence toward working to get the thirteenth amendment passed, which was one of his greatest achievements as president, is the primary driving force in which the film portrays the events’ historical significance. The film demonstrates the difficulties that Lincoln, his family, his advisors, and his supporters go through as they push to gain more support to