Jim Crow Laws According to the article “Nat Turner Revisited,” it says, “Each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other- male in female, white in black, and black in white. We are apart of each other” ( “Nat” 14). African Americans continuously had many struggles after the Civil War ended in 1865. After President Abraham Lincoln legalized the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery ended, freeing African Americans. When discussing the importance of the Jim Crow laws, it’s important to understand the definition of the laws, the history behind the laws, and the effect these laws had on today’s segregation issues.
In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, an African American family known as the Youngers experience “societal implications” of segregation in Chicago, Illinois, and the threats as well as harassments that followed. Unlike the Jim Crow Laws that were enforced legally in the South during this time period, the segregation in Chicago was implied and enforced by society rather than law. When the American Civil War ended and the Union found their victory, about four million slaves were granted their freedom. The United States entered a period of Reconstruction (1865-1877) when the northern states attempted to reunite with the south. President Andrew Johnson publicized his proposals for the Reconstruction.
As a result, States created their own constitutions about abolishing slavery. Before the Civil War, many people fought back and forth between sides of slavery. The United States’ creation of the Thirteenth through the Fifteenth Amendments was an influential compromise between United States and slavery because it challenged current society, abolished slavery, and created an equal country. Throughout the world’s history slavery was there. There were slave traders that captured and sold the slaves.
They liked Roosevelt because he was big on helping them out on getting their rights that they deserved. "One important demographic change underlay the experience of African-Americans during the Roosevelt years. The migration of African-Americans from the South to the urban North, which began in 1910, continued in the 1930s and accelerated in the 1940s during World War II. As a result, black Americans during the Roosevelt years lived for the most part either in the urban North or in the rural South, although the Depression chased increasingly large numbers of blacks to southern cities as well. In the North, blacks encountered de facto segregation, racism, and discrimination in housing and public services; nevertheless, they were able to vote and had better job opportunities.
Their goal was the abolition of segregation enfranchisement and the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (Franklin 288). “In the first year of its existence the NAACP launched a program to widen the industrial opportunities for Negroes, to seek greater police protection for the in the South, and to carry on a crusade against lynching and lawlessness” (Franklin 288). Within a couple of years NAACP began spreading and had branches in every big city in the United States. The organization helped to provide economic opportunities for blacks by setting up organizations and training
They did so by passing laws that helped protect those who used to be slaves, also known as “freedmen”, as well as to those who were already free before the war in the South. Although some African-Americans still faced some discrimination, the Reconstruction Era marked progress — African-Americans were even granted the right to vote. However, in the 1870s, with the help of rebel groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the White League, who intimated African-Americans from voting, the Democrats gradually regained power in the Southern states. These Southern Democrat governments, who were very angered by their defeat in the Civil War, and who held White supremacism beliefs, then scraped the freedmen protection laws and legislated Jim Crow laws, segregating the population in an attempt to disenfranchise and maltreat African-Americans. The segregation laws were named after the fictional blackface character Jim Crow played by Thomas Dartmouth
After slavery, African Americans in the south were in a time of change. Though they were free from slavery, whippings, and auctions, I believe life became difficult for them even after slavery ended. Racism began to grow increasingly, as many could not accept the fact that there was no more slavery. It became stricter when the government in the South enforced laws called Black Codes. Those laws were set to grant only certain rights to people of color.
After the civil war, the struggle between African American freedom and white dominance were at its strongest. These struggles are what would lay the foundation for the lives of the African Americans for many years after. The plan for reconstruction started after the civil war ended and was the major attempt at trying to create an interracial democracy and fix society, as well as physical rebuilding the country. The ways of the society also were changing very much. The end of slavery led to a hope of economic freedom for the African Americans; allowing them to break free from the grips of white dominance.
By doing this, King is able to make his audience acknowledge the fact that the African American population has been essentially cheated of its freedom. This example correlates with the rest of his speech, speaking on how African Americans are treated as less than human even after being granted their freedom in 1865. To fully understand why he compares these two things the audience will need to know some background information regarding the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and how they abolished slavery and were supposed to give the African American slaves equal rights. This metaphor makes the audience ponder about how African Americans were promised equality after the Civil War and how all they got in the end was segregation and violence. Another noteworthy metaphor King uses is when he states that we need to "lift our nation from the
10 As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers. He allowed for assistance to the black American community because he wanted racial sameness. A major accomplishment of the Renaissance was to open the door to mainstream white periodicals and publishing houses, although the relationship between the Renaissance writers and white publishers and audiences created some controversy. Factors leading to the decline of this era include the Great