What Is The Beginning Of The 1900's Discrimination Against African Americans

In effect of the thirteenth amendment (1865), African-American once regarded legally as slaves were newly freed. With the fourteenth amendment (1868), African-Americans found their citizenship. With the passing of the fifteenth amendment (1870), all United States citizens were allowed to vote, regardless of their race or color, or “previous condition of servitude”. Along with these rights, African-Americans found new liberties granted, such as “desegregated streetcars in 1867”, “integrated public schools in 1869”, and “legalized interracial marriage (1868-1896)”.

Although African-Americans had technically been granted citizenship and voting rights when the 14th and 15th Amendments were passed in the late 1800s, they were still forced into subservient positions in society by white Americans who refused to acknowledge the former’s equal rights as citizens of the United States. They were bullied into not voting by Klansmen, forced to sit in segregated sections of restaurants and busses, and not given educational opportunities that equaled those of white students. This discrimination was especially prevalent in the deep south, where racist prejudices refused to die; the laws might have changed, but the people hadn’t.

During the early 1860's the discussions over states v. Union rights had reached its breaking point and outraged the South seceded from the union. The following years would see not only one of the nations bloodiest wars, but the period of reconstruction that was to follow. Freed slaves now had to find their place within a nation that was less that ready to except them. The battle between legislature passed down by the government and the social ideologies of the past began both during and after the period of reconstruction as it was made evident that changing the minds of the current generation would not be easy. While the years 1860-1877 brought major constitutional changes regarding the rights of African Americans following the civil war,

In the American society during the late 19th and early 20th century, many people had several ideas in how the country’s development should be managed. During this, the social and political situations black Americans had to deal with was their continuous struggle for civil rights. The right not to vote was one of the biggest issue in the southern black life’s. The Jim crow law helping during this time by mandating equal rights, yet separate.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it.”-Harper Lee. Racism and segregation were issues that tore at the fabric of our country for many years. 1881-1900 was a time when blacks had limited freedoms and were faced with segregation. However, they didn’t just sit and wait for things to change, they faced them head on. The Tuskegee institute, the Civil Rights Act, and Plessy v. Ferguson are examples of blacks inequality and how they took matters into their own hands.

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that reinforced racial segregation in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s (Urofsky). The laws mandated segregation of schools, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, and restaurants. In legal theory, blacks received “separate but equal” treatment under the law--in actuality, public facilities were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated criteria (PBS). Despite Jim Crow laws being abolished in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson

After the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, a number of laws both restricting and enabling the rights of black Americans was passed in the United States. Segregation laws came after the civil war (George 10). First, in 1870, a Virginian law made it illegal for black and white children to attend the same school (David). In 1875, Congress passed an act prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. (David)When Blacks American emigrated to the west after 1875, they were met with hostility from both whites and Native Americans (David). From 1890-1908, all Southern states adopted new constitutions and voting laws designed to disenfranchise black votes (David)

Even after about a century since the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in the southern part of the United States still experienced severely hateful and unequal treatment. The saying “separate but equal” was used mostly to justify this unfair treatment as well as things like the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws separated African Americans from being in places that were of the same quality as those that white people went to. These places were always of poorer condition and mostly unbearable but African Americans went to them nonetheless because they could only work with what they were given. As the plights of African American became worse the Civil Rights movement, a campaign intended to better the living conditions

From the KKK and lynchings to public persecution, the 1920’s equaled hell for African Americans. Even though many African Americans moved North after World War I, 85% still resided in the Southern former slave states (Kyvig 19). African Americans still had few rights and racism was at a high. Members of the KKK resorted to lynchings; “lynching of blacks more than a hundred times a year between 1885 and 1900, and between fifty and seventy-five times a year from then until 1920” (Kyvig 169-170) to get their opinions of blacks across. They were also pitted against the government with laws; police forces took the side of racism by arresting African Americans for doing no wrong and letting whites get away with crimes against them.

This book makes clear that the struggle for racial equality was nationwide and not just isolated to certain geographical locations. A common misconception about the civil rights movement is that blatant racism was a problem only encountered in the Deep South. However, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour does a great job of clarifying this misconception and showing the many elements of the struggle for justice that blacks from coast to coast experienced.

In 1865, the United States government implemented what was known as Reconstruction. Its’ purpose was to remove slavery from the south, and give African-American’s the freedom in which they deserved. However, the freedom that they deserved was not the freedom that they received. With documents like The Black Codes restricting them from numerous privileges that white people had and the terroristic organization known as the Klu Klux Klan attacking and killing them, African-American’s were still being oppressed by their government as well as their fellow man. Slavery may have been abolished, but African-American’s were not yet given the freedom and rights that their white counterparts took for granted.

The period of 1917 – 1955 saw the positions of black Americans change. However, in this first half of the century, not drastically. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of coloured people) was most of the driving forces behind the advances black Americans in the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s, experienced, with every case fought in that decade won; however, whether won or not the ultimate power remained in the hands of the Supreme court, where in some cases, policies would take from a year to a full decade to come to fruition; examples being many schools in the South that were ruled to be desegregated. In terms of general civil rights achieved on a mass scale for black Americans, progress was lacking, with the main changes occurring throughout the 1960’s.

The south legalized segregation and institutionalized racism towards African American in 1877. Whites passed qualification laws, Poll Taxes, Literacy Test and Grandfather Clause. These laws were served to deprive blacks the right to vote and of legal right. They were called the Jim crow laws, these laws began in the 1960’s and continued in force until 1989’s. They kept the black people separated from the white people

Although the conclusion of the Civil War during the mid-1860s demolished the official practice of slavery, the oppression and exploitation of African Americans has continued. Although the rights and opportunities of African Americans were greatly improved during Reconstruction, cases such a 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson, which served as the legal basis for segregation, continue to diminish the recognized humanity of African Americans as equal people. Furthermore, the practice of the sharecropping system impoverished unemployed African Americans, recreating slavery. As economic and social conditions worsened, the civil rights movement began to emerge as the oppressed responded to their conditions, searching for equality and protected

Another factor in the 1930’s that impacted African Americans is Jim Crow. The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. The Jim Crow laws affected African Americans by creating a status of 'separate but equal.' African Americans were not, under the Jim Crow laws, allowed to drink from the same water fountains as white people. They had to attend different schools, restaurants, and sit at the back of the bus. The Jim Crow laws affected almost every area of the life of African Americans. The Jim Crow laws took the first hit in 1954 in the ruling by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education. The Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional.