African American Limitations

One social limitation for the African American were segregation.The Jim Crow laws separated every public facilities, one for colored people and another for white people. The facilities for whites were far better than the black people. For example the white students had new textbooks and went to clean, well-lighted schools. African Americans had to use torn, out-of-date textbooks. Often African American students were crowded into a single dirty, ill-lighted room. African American children had to walk miles to school while the white students school were far closer and given a school bus to ride to and from home. Segregating facilities is by far the absolute thing from equal and its plain out stupidity. It does not map out that we are all equal.

Some political limitations for the African Americans were the literacy tests, poll tax and grandfather clause. Some states limited the right to vote to the ones who could pass a literacy test. Often, white voters were given easier passages than African Americans. White election officials had the final say on whether a potential voter passed the test. The poll tax was an annual tax required to be paid before a vote could be cast. Sharecroppers often did not have enough money to pay the tax therefore could not vote. Many Southern states created a grandfather clause which stated that anyone whose father or grandfather had been eligible to vote before January 1, 1867 was guaranteed the right to vote. Before that time, freed slaves did not have the right to vote therefore African American being ineligible to vote.
One economic limitation for the African Americans was the Black Codes. The Black Codes were designed restrict civil rights for African Americans and to make them work in a labour based economy on low wages or debts. It caused economic inequality for the African Americans. For example some codes restricted African Americans' ability to own land. Black codes often permitted the arrest of poor, unemployed persons, usually African American, for lack of homes or money.