Impact Of Segregation On African Americans

While the clause required states and other public facilities to treat both racially separate buildings to be operated and services be kept equal, the reality showed otherwise, and many African-American facilities became rundown, were underfunded and sometimes were limited. Segregation, forcefully put two perspectives on American society for both white and black populations. Much of the segregation lead to lower education rates for blacks because many of them who were former slaves were not allowed to receive any literacy of any kind. Even after the Emancipation, funded was low for black schools and were still struggling to keep up with the rest of their white counterparts. The former Jim Crow laws did everything possible as well, even in the
South to hire the now free African Americans under yearly contracts of labor and limit their rights as much as possible to keep them from going to school or going their own way of finding work and housing (Gates 1999). White supremacy was heavy in the south and many resorted to violence such as lynching, burning, and disembodiment. The south experienced economic downturn and challenges faced reconstruction delays and underdevelopment after the Civil War. The 20th century contained plenty of challenges during post-Civil War and post-Emancipation eras for African Americans.
Many tried adjusting to their freedom while migrating in large numbers to the north American states. This was highly enticing during the beginnings of WWI opened up many job opportunities for African Americans in the north. The boll weevil devastated the cotton cash crop and the economy in that field during the 1920s (Gates 1999). This was combined for a push factor for the Great Migration of African Americans to have a place in the socio-economic span of life. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 to politically advocate for racial equality across all platforms of life in America for for more social and political rights regarding African Americans. They fought for desegregation of schools, protesting against lynching, and advocated for equal rights that African Americans haven’t been receiving in terms of their poverty, education, and social discrimination. By the 1940’s, the African Americas saw additional freedom starting with FDR’s executive order 8802 that denied discrimination in the workplace. During this time, too, African Americans were also getting their highest paying wage they had ever seen. WWI saw desegregation of military personnel,
too. By the 1950’s, the US had changes in its geographic template such as the Interstate Highway, the increase in the automobile industry, Congress becoming religious (using “In God We Trust” as the US motto), and social changes such as suburban increases, and endless protests against social injustice. American society thus changed forever in 1954 when Brown vs. Board of Education declared the segregation of public schools between Caucasian and African Americans was unconstitutional . While many resisted this, especially in the south, who resisted heavily to maintain segregation, but dwindled down when colored children enter all-white schools the following fall semester. The 1960’s was a process of continuations for equal justice among African Americans that was the Civil Rights Movement.
Prejudice still occurred in an incident where 4 black college students voiced their discrimination when they were denied service in a college lunch counter in North Carolina. (A&E). Other demonstrations such as the March on Washington and civil rights leader, Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph and MLK Jr, showcased for civil legislations for social and job equality for all. By the following year in 1964, Lyndon B. John passed the Civil Rights Act. It was quickly backlash by several white opposers who denied the Act to be enacted and turned into violence and the deaths of many peaceful participants and civil rights
leaders. In the years after the Act, many African Americans suffered discrimination such housing /job discrimination, redlining (purposely rising prices of housing), and violence such as riots in Watts, LA and Harlem, NYC (Carson 1981). Despite this, the later 60’s and much of the 70’s saw socio-economic changed in American society where African Americans established the Black Power Movement, which was the radical opinions of black stating they should do better things for themselves, by themselves. The affirmative action clause defined equal opportunities for job and education placement for all people of color, such as when Allan Bakke was denied acceptance twice, even proving his scores were high than that of any other race who got in. Examples like these, were steps closer and closer to equality for all African Americans alike. While the last few centuries proved completely unimaginable use of human labor, the oppression of African Americans has greatly deteriorated. While much oppression still occurs to this day for African Americans such as police brutality and the war on drugs, the African Americans were able to achieve their goals of being equal under US every chance that they got. The cases of unconstitutional conventional wisdom proved that discrimination in the US for blacks deemed inhumane and immoral. While many Africans were able to bring their culture during times of slavery many never forgot whey they came from and who they are. Their history contains times of hardships and difficulties, but their history also includes perseverance, a resistance to racism, and equality among other races.