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Segregation: Martin Luther King

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Segregation: Martin Luther King
In the early 1900s America was torn apart in a battle known as segregation. The African American race was treated unjustly and faced a tough journey. They were shoved aside and torn apart from the Caucasian Americans. There was separate railroad cars, schools, and even to such small insignificant things as separate water fountains. The white children were being taught to treat African Americans as dirty people who deserved to be separate. It created a prejudice that would take years to overcome, to completely be unselfish again. Caucasian Americans were very wrong in their thinking and they never thought about how it made African Americans feel. The African Americans of this time period were struggling to overcome this new time where they were treated as outsiders, as if they were not a part of the American people. Every single human being is uniquely different and segregation was a constant battle our fellow Americans fought to overcome, all for the sole purpose of gaining equality.

There were Caucasian people who thought segregation was a good thing and supported it strongly. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with separate facilities and they didn’t even wonder about how African Americans lives were affected by this injustice. African Americans rights were basically stripped away all because they were viewed as “different.” A Florida congressman, Frank Clark, was open about his views on segregation. He truly believed segregation was a great thing and he supported this belief. When talking about the railroad cars he explains that it is good to have separate ones. He blames the conditions of the cars on the African Americans. He states to “imagine a nice, new passenger coach, packed with dirty, greasy, filthy negroes, down South in midsummer, and you can readily understand why that car does not long remain as good, as clean, and a as desirable as a similar car occupied exclusively by white travelers” (Frank Clark praises segregation 37). In

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