The Hardships Of African Americans In The 19th Century

African and Native Americans have faced numerous hardships in the United States throughout history. The relationship between the African Americans, Native Americans, and people with strong European ancestry, those encompassing White society, developed into one of mass exploitation and assimilation, especially during the 19th century. Having been oppressed, discriminated against, and all-inclusively abused in numerous ways, both Africans and Natives Americans continued to experience the same conditions even after the impactful American Civil War that ended in 1865. African Americans, although they gained greater freedom through the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, continued to experience racial discrimination through segregation and increased violence with white supremacists, such as the Ku Klux Klan, while Native Americans were gradually beginning to lose their own culture through wars, mass assimilation, and extreme culture shock. Together, both groups experienced critical, violent, and detrimental changes in their treatment by White society in the second half of the 19th century, which was greatly influenced by the strong ideology of race and culture.

Race, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, is a group of people or class unified by shared interests, habits, and or characteristics. In history, the term ‘race’ carries a powerfully negative connotation that is linked back, and played a key role in, to the discrimination and oppression of specific groups of people such as the African and Native Americans by White society. In the late 19th century, white supremacists believed themselves to be above other ‘races’ in the sense that their society was more advanced and ultimately superior. Their belief in superiority of race would further lead to detrimental treatment of African and Native