Anthony Johnson: A Man In Control Of His Own

Discrimination has been present throughout our country’s full history, and even now. It has existed in many forms, whether against blacks, non-catholics, women, or anything else. However, in one location, the Confederacy, there has been more of it than anytime else in US history. Slavery was legal there for centuries, and after it became illegal, discrimination stayed and the Jim Crow laws, along with the KKK, arose. This area has been known for its racism throughout the years, and is a prime example of discrimination in modern history. Discrimination “is the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex”, and throughout the history of the US, including in the Confederacy,
This source tells the story of Anthony Johnson, an indentured servant who made a name for himself and became a respected member of his community. “In August of [1870], however, an all-white jury ruled that the original land in Virginia could be seized by the state “because he was negroe and by consequence an alien”. Even though the law of that time was supposed to be fair to all people, whites who didn’t like Anthony took his land using the law to their advantage. They managed to get around the law to solve their ‘problem’. Another example of people going around laws are in the reconstruction period of the south (1865-1877). One of the reconstruction acts, as stated in Handout 7.4, says, “New state constitutions were required to provide for universal manhood suffrage.” This means that all men would have to be able to vote. Even though all men were able to vote, activity such as threatening voters allowed whites to force blacks to either vote democratic, not vote at all, or kill them. This scared many voters, who were technically allowed to vote, into not voting for fear of retribution. This goes against the spirit of liberty, but even if those men who were threatening the freedmen thought they were doing right, it goes against the first amendment and many rights which we hold very high. Judge Learned Hand gave a speech on this very topic,
The opposition will propose that these laws restricted the black vote to insignificance. Although that may be true, it was the public opinion which pushed the lawmakers in that direction. As document 14.2 states, the white southerners want “to make it clear that the white south ‘does not desire or intend to ever include black men among its citizens’”. This set of laws was just an extension of the will of the people in those states who believed in white supremacy, and those laws were only followed because the people enforcing them believed they were