African Americans Experiences with Ostracism

Ostracism in and of itself is a condition no human wants to experience but compounded with disrespect and abuse, it describes the condition of the African Americans prior to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth , and Fifteenth Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment supposedly outlawed slavery; however, whites still found ways around the law in order to keep blacks below them. The Fourteenth Amendment granted blacks citizenship, but they were still denied basic rights. The Fifteenth Amendment granted blacks the right to vote; however, most blacks were incapable of voting due to specific obstacles. Jim Crow Laws were an extreme obstacle in the integration of African Americans. Hate Groups were another attempt to restrain blacks from integrating into society. Although the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were designed to provide freedom for the slaves, they were still denied their freedom by specific obstacles.

Although the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, whites kept their supremacy by finding legal ways to control blacks. Many white Southerners were not in favor of the 13th Amendment so many Southern states enforced Black Codes, which basically returned blacks to slavery without calling it slavery. In the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision was made to legally allow whites to have a separate life away from the blacks. Because of this decision, whites were expected to act superior to blacks. They continued to control the blacks even though blacks were considered free. Whites were also given special benefits called “white privileges” that blacks did .not receive. This has caused problems during efforts to integrate whites and colored people. Blacks were also highly publicly discriminated ag...

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...de the home most of the time as a "field laborer.” Although some blacks were able to be successful, whites still targeted them. Wealthy blacks were the biggest target for jealous whites (George).

Hate groups were formed in an attempt to keep blacks from integrating into society. One of the most common hate groups, the Ku Klux Klan, used terrorism and hatred toward blacks(George 17-18). The Ku Klux Klan mainly targeted successful blacks. They would then kill the blacks because the whites were jealous of the blacks' wealth. This caused many blacks to lose hope for success in the South so they moved north (62). Hate groups began using lynching as a way to insure white supremacy and continue to deny rights given to African Americans. Over 3,000 lynchings were reported in the twenty years after The Supreme Court's decision in the Civil Rights Cases (Telgen 16-17)