The 19th century was a hard time for the African-Americans and Native Americans of the U.S. Treatment of these people by the White society brought about much pain and suffering for their races. This is because race played a large role in society during the 19th century, because of this, African-Americans and Native Americans were treated poorly in their relationship with the White Society.
It was largely believed that the African-Americans role in society was one of inferiority to the White race. Evidence of this can be seen in the “Initiation Oath of the Knights of the White Camelia.” The Knights of the White Camelia, more commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan (or KKK for short), believe that it was their duty to maintain the division between the African-American and the White society by any means necessary. The KKK members wanted keep the Caucasian race the superior race through suppressing the African-Americans by intimidating them to stay away from the political sphere and preventing interracial marriages. In the oath they vow to obtain these measures only through lawfully means (Gorn 4-5). Thomas W. Wilson felt that African-Americans were inferior to Whites, maybe not to the extent that the KKK felt, in his article “Reconstruction (1906)” he briefly speaks of the African-Americans as being ignorant, crude, and as “easy dupes” (Hollitz 10). Both of these sources show the Whites need for supremacy over the African-Americans and, as the initiation speech of the KKK states, their willingness to exert their supremacy.
Do to the Whites belief that they were superior to the African-American it is only natural that their treatment of the African-Americans matched their distaste of them. Even though the KKK’s oath...
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...r race is just as good as the White race. Also, through the failure of assimilation Native Americans were able to keep their reservations which still thrive today, not in glory through which they once thrived, but they are still around. It wasn’t easy for these two races to get to the point at which they are now, and prejudices against them do still exist in the world, but hopefully one day races of every kind will be able to live in harmony with one another, without the need to make everyone like themselves.
Works Cited
Gorn, Elliot J., Randy Roberts, and Terry D. Bilhartz. Constructing the American Past: A Source Book of a People’s History. 7th ed. Vol 2. New Jersy: Pearson Education Inc., 2011. Print.
Hollitz, John. Thinking Through the Past: A Critical Thinking Approach to U.S. History Vol I: to 1877. 4th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2010. Print.
George Browm Tindall, David Emory Shi. American History: 5th Brief edition, W. W. Norton & Company; November 1999
Boyer, Paul S. The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. D.C. Heath and Company, Mass. © 1990
Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010. Print.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States: 1492-present. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Print.
The population of African Americans from 1865 to 1900 had limited social freedom. Social limitations are limitations that relate “…to society and the way people interact with each other,” as defined by the lesson. One example of a social limitation African Americans experienced at the time is the white supremacy terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan or the KKK. The KKK started as a social club formed by former confederate soldiers, which rapidly became a domestic terrorist organization. The KKK members were white supremacists who’s objective was to ward off African Americans from using their new political power. In an attempts to achieve their objective, Klansmen would burn African American schools, scare and threaten voters, destroy the homes of African Americans and also the homes of whites who supported African American rights. The greatest terror the KKK imposed was that of lynching. Lynching may be defined via the lesson as, “…public hanging for an alleged offense without benefit of trial.” As one can imagine these tactics struck fear into African Americans and the KKK was achiev...
Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.
Walens, Susann. A. United States History Since 1877. Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT. September 2007.
Examine the condition of African-Americans in the late nineteenth century and explain why the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which were enacted to aid the new freedmen, actually did little.
Becker, S., & Glover, L., & Wheeler, W. (2012). Discovering the American Past: A Look at the
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The thought of African Americans being less than whites has carried on for years and was first challenged with the abolition of slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment (Our Documents). Abraham Lincoln gets credit for the freeing of the slaves because he was the president who fought to get these amendments. Although slavery was no longer aloud that did not change how people felt about the African Americans. Races with darker ski...
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The early twentieth century was difficult for African Americans, during that time they faced difficulties
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