African American History

Chris Layne Professor Madar US. History 122.01
New Chapter in American History
Imagine living in a world at which you are harassed and abused just because of the color of your skin. Since the beginning of America’s existence, Whites have had this strong hate towards the black population. The whites wanted to continue to have the power and control in their hands. In order for them to achieve this, the white southerners came up with the Jim Crow laws to prevent the African Americans from achieving their god given right of being free and equal. This did not end the African hope of becoming equal. After many years of mistreatment, African Americans knew that change in society was necessary. The members of the black population have been enslaved, beaten, abused, neglected and just taken advantage of, since the end of the civil war, even into present times, African Americans have struggled for equality and rights that white Americans often take for granted. Arguably, no post-war struggle was larger or more significant than the movement to eliminate the Jim Crow laws from existence in the South. As a large portion of the Civil Rights movement, many works are dedicated to the efforts put forth and the ensuing results, including “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka”, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, “Black Revolution”, “Bigger Than a Hamburger,” and the act from Rosa Parks.
In 1896 the government passed a law that legally allowed racial discrimination. Under the landmark court case name of “Plessy vs Ferguson”, this ruled that this sort of discrimination did not violate the 14th amendment of the Constitution, as long as the facilities were equal. However, these facilities were not equal in anyway. So the African America...

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...en have this “destined date with freedom,” at which they can stand alongside their fellow brothers and sisters and be First- Class Citizens and be done with racial discrimination for the whole world.
Since the beginning of America till after the Jim Crow era, the African Americans have been humiliated, been considered inferior, and have been denied their basic given rights. However, even with this treatment, the African Americans did not give up or lose hope. They were beaten and imprisoned for their beliefs as shown in the sources above, but they continued to fight for racial integration and to also rise and stand up for themselves and equality. After about a hundred years of mistreatment and being denied their basic human and civil rights, the African Americans defeated the laws that were put down on them and overcame the tragedies during the era of Jim Crow.