Some might argue that the right to free speech or the right to purchase whatever you choose with your own money is what makes you a true American citizen. In Wilbert L. Jenkins’s book, Climbing Up to Glory: A Short History of African Americans During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the right to vote is a major bonus when obtaining the rights of being an American citizen. They are so important in fact that African Americans never stopped fighting to obtain them. Ever since the founding of the United States of America, slavery of those with darker complexion were a common household object of every white citizen. On top of hard days of labor, abuse, and malnutrition, they simply had no rights because they were not considered a citizen of the …show more content…
This upset Southern whites tremendously. In order to solve the problem, the Ku Klux Klan, which was formed in 1866 made a significant come back by jumping up their violence and intimidating acts. Their goal was “to intimidate blacks so that they would fear for their lives and stop supporting the Republican Party” (222). In order to accomplish this, the Klansmen set out wearing their full white cloaks to whip, shoot, and rape the freedmen who were able to vote. They made camp at the poll stations and gave warning to the African Americans who were planning to go to them in order to vote. Even though the Ku Klux Klan did stop many freedmen from voting, a few still got through in order to vote …show more content…
One of their main targets were two forms of transportation, streetcars and horsecars. They organized many protests and eventually “the streetcar gave in and announced that segregation was ended” (215). Even though the accomplished one major problem, it truly wasn’t solved and there were many more to go. After years of fighting for their rights in office, several African Americans finally were elected into office. Even though whites still held a majority in office, “out of a total of 127 members in the first legislative, eighty-seven were blacks” (211). Two of those men were Alonzo J. Ransier, 1870, and Richard Gleaves, 182. Times were beginning to look up since the blacks were finding ways to get around the white restrictions and to vote for the important decisions that every male citizen of the United States was meant to make. Yet two terrible things happen once they got into office. When the Southern whites realized that there were blacks in office, they picked up their attacks. The Ku Klux Klan murdered male African Americans and often the females were raped. Then the African Americans in office were criticized and threatened. Even though they held positions in office, they still not possess complete
The fight for equality, specifically, in the field of education became a primary issue amongst the African-American community. Some states would pass laws in favor of giving African-Americans equality in public school systems. For example, in 1849, Ohio passed a law “to establish schools for Black children to be financed as all other public schools were.” The power of the law in 1849 proved it was not enough to sway the people of Ohio equality for African-Americans was best for their state.
Current Profile of African Americans in ‘White’ America In Frederick Douglass’s 1865 speech, “What the Black man wants,” shed light to the social life of African Americans in contrast to ‘whites’ in ‘free’ American states. During this period in African American history and consciousness they were still in legal slavery, facing racial discrimination in every aspect, marginalized by state policies, but most importantly they lacked suffrage and faced many inequalities that prevented them from sharing the same civic rights as ‘white’ citizens of America. Even though, the declaration of independence in 1776 viewed African American as ‘citizens,’ it failed to state that they enjoyed the same protection as ‘whites’. As a result, slavery became
Prior to the establishment of this act, African Americans faced many legal restraints prohibiting many of them from voting- a right guaranteed to all citizens under the fifteenth amendment. When African Americans attended the polling booths, they were often asked to complete a literacy test or pay a poll fine to vote. These tests caused a vast demographic of African Americans to be exempt from the voting process, excluding and discrediting their voices. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally outlawed any discriminatory voting prerequisites used by many Southern states at the time. The development of this act is often seen as a crucial turning point for the Civil Rights Movement and one of the nation’s most significant accomplishments since Reconstruction.
Annabelle Wintson Bower History 8A March 12, 2018 Title Although the slavery was abolished in 1865, the rights given to African Americans were not nearly equal to those of white Americans. After slavery was abolished, inequality in American society ran high, and many laws were put in place to restrict the rights and abilities of African Americans. Some laws include the Jim Crow Laws (1870 to 1950s) and the Supreme Court Ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that ruled that there could be “separate but equal” facilities and services for people of color and white Americans.
Adapted from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Address, he highlights the issue of voting equality for African Americans. He believes that this restriction against African Americans counters the ideals of the constitution. To support his argument, in great detail, Johnson describes the strenuous registration process African Americans must go through in order to vote. To convey strong urgency towards this issue, Johnson poses himself to be a regular American, to connect, and urge the audience to advocate for his cause. Combining all of these elements, Johnson provides a powerful and poignant argument that the audience can support.
The common people were denied the right to vote in national elections. African Americans could not cast their own votes, but counted as three-fifths of a vote for whoever voted for its owner. In addition, white women could not even vote for a
Even after the Civil War, African Americans had to continue to fight for the right to vote. People who weren't Christians couldn’t vote, and sometimes couldn’t even live in some colonies. Quakers and Jews were persecuted mercilessly, and radical thinkers and teachers, could be banned from the Bay colony. Democracy in the colonies
During the 1900s to the 1920s, progressive reformers and the federal government were able to transition through a nearly complete reform at the national level. They were successful in areas concerning trusts, child labor, and women’s suffrage; however, they lacked the skill set to address issues concerning the civil rights movement. Their successful accomplishments helped millions of middle class Americans prosper economically. In addition, they also emphasized a need to take part in politics so that elected officials will react to the public’s concerns.
All throughout the beginning half of the 20th Century, Blacks, who were still in the full-fledged war against oppression, were finally starting to make some progress. By the year 1941, through legal battles, blacks were able to organize individuals on the ground, Executive order 8802(first federal action to promote equality and prohibit employment discrimination) and even the educational system had begun to desegregate. Despite the fact that there was a huge push back against Jim Crow through legal action, the south was not willing to concede. With new legislation in place, that was designed to promote equality, individuals are known as the Freedom Riders entered the south to challenge segregation at its very core.
That made it difficult for African Americans to vote also the Ku Klux Klan was a danger for African Americans because of so many lynches that happened in the south to discouraged voters. Then “from the late 1870s onward, southern legislatures passed a series of laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of color” on public transportation, in schools, parks, restaurants, theaters, and other locations” (Costly) known as the Jim Crow laws. The case Plessy v. Ferguson was based in Louisiana where an incident happened when an African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. This case went up to the Supreme Court because of the law that was broken and it became a significant to African Americans where stood under the law. The Supreme Court argued that Plessy was treated equal there was no Constitution veiled but he broke the law by not sitting where he didn’t belong.
Impact of the Booker T. Washington Strategy on the African-American Agenda Introduction The end of slavery in the South presented challenges for the freed black men and women in the region that continue to affect the social progress made ethnic minorities in the United States to this date. While slavery was undoubtedly a major contributor to the degradation process of the humanity and intelligence of the colored race at the time, the real problem for the leaders of the communities was the integration of their people into the American system. For the white men, their issue was how to not cede power to a growing population of black people that could till the lands better than them and were filled with hatred for the atrocities committed against them by several
To accomplish social equality and justice has been a long controversial issue in U.S. history. Voting Rights Act of 1965 should be understood as a tremendous accomplishment today because it not only represent a symbol of the triumph of fighting social injustice, but also open the first gate for African American and minority to strive for more political power in order to create a “great society.”
Voting has been a major barrier for African Americans before and since 1870 when African Americans males were given the right to vote due to a ratification in the 15th Amendment. In the article “A Dream Undone” by the New York Times, the reader is given a brief history of the black vote. Most of this is told in brief anecdotes from and or about numerous figures that reside in North Carolina. The stories focus on the tactics used to suppress the black vote, the role of race in politics, how race changed politics, and the progression of the black vote.
First, in the 1960s there was a variety of political issues. ¨At the beginning of the 1960s, many Americans believed they were standing at the dawn of a Golden Age¨. On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy became president of the United States. During his presidential campaign in 1960, John F. Kennedy had promised the most ambitious domestic agenda since the New Deal, a package of laws and reforms that sought to eliminate injustice and inequality in the United States. But the New Frontier ran into problems instantly. The Democrats Congressional majority depended on a group of Southerners who loathed the plan’s interventionist liberalism and all they tried to block it.
They didn’t have the right to,”Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica. American voting rights were usually white males who owned property or land, when most laws were gender or race