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Slavery And Jim Crow Laws Essay

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Throughout the early 1960s, African American people living in the United States were greatly oppressed. Slavery and Jim Crow laws, which justified segregation, were abolished; however, African Americans did not receive equal treatment, as the ideology of white supremacy, or Caucasians being the superior race, remained in tact. Since juries typically consisted of Caucasian males who favored other Caucasians, African Americans rarely received fair trials. Other factors, such as housing opportunities, were unequal for African Americans as well, and as a result, poorer districts consisting solely of African Americans formed. Since African Americans were strictly segregated from Caucasians and therefore did not receive similar opportunities, the ideology that African Americans were inferior to Caucasians became hegemonic, meaning that the belief that African Americans had fewer rights than Caucasians was simply accepted in society without question. Though laws and regulations guaranteed equality among all races, African Americans remained oppressed; therefore, groups like the Black Panther Party began to fight this hegemonic ideology. Their violent and nonviolent protests were considered counter-hegemonic, as they hoped to diminish the unfair and inaccurate ideologies that had existed and essentially become common sense within society. In the “Black Panther Platform,” the Black Panther Party details their reasons for participating in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, a

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