The Disadvantages that Black Americans Faced in the 1950’s

The disadvantages that black Americans faced in the 1950’s

In the 1950’s black people were discriminated and mistreated beyond belief whilst white people lived a life of luxury with cars, televisions and money. Statistics from the ‘US Department of Commerce’ state that 18% of white people lived below the poverty line whilst 56% of black people lived below the poverty line.

From 1882 to 1968, 3,445 lynching’s were recorded and many were not recorded. This was one way of the many problems black Americans faced, although only 9 lynching’s were recorded from 1950 to 1968 this wasn’t the only way to mistreat black Americans. The American Congress wrote 27 amendments, the 13th stated that slavery was wrong so from December 6th, 1865 slavery was illegal. But soon after over 17 Southern American states invented Jim Crow Laws from 1876 to 1968 this meant that there was segregation with all public facilities such as, public transportation, water fountains and education services.(145) The name Jim Crow came from a famous white comedian who made racist jokes about other races.

Another disadvantage black Americans faced in the 1950’s was not being allowed to vote, white Americans intimidated then into not voting and even if they still weren’t intimidated blacks would have to pass a test to be able to vote and the majority of black Americans couldn’t write or read because they were uneducated this was because there were very few only ‘coloured’ schools and more no ‘coloured’ schools so their were very few educated non-white Americans. In the only black schools they had bad equipment and lowly qualified teachers so the education standard for black students was bad. Jobs were also segregated because white Americans were given high paying jobs that were usually easy and enjoyable whilst black Americans were given hard manual labour jobs with very low wages, this meant they lived in ghettos and slum neighbourhoods which had very high crime rates.

Economically black Americans faced disadvantages because they had low wage jobs so they couldn’t afford houses in safe neighbourhoods statistics from the ‘United States Department of the Treasury’ show that blacks were earning a maximum of $3,828 per year whilst whites were earning a minimum

of $7,057 a year this also supports the job segregation as white American bosses gave whites the higher paying jobs and blacks the lower paying jobs.

As a result