African Americans In The Early 1900s

African Americans helped to build America as we know it today. First as slaves then later on as U.S. citizens, although they were no longer slaves they had a long ways to go before they were truly free. Within the country after the civil war although they were no longer slaves, they were no where near being equals with the white majority of the country, a new hardship for them to overcome had reared it's ugly head. Segregation, the Jim Crow laws would later be established to dictate how non-whites and immigrants should be treated. It wouldn't be until later down the road, thanks to the help of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon B. Johnson that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be passed and African Americans, as well as other minorities within

They could no longer control them as they use to when they were slaves and didn't like the idea of them all intermixing. In 1875 the first act the southerners tried to pass was overturned as unconstitutional stating that the state government could not violate the fourteenth amendment by passing legislation that discriminated against individuals due to their race2. However this did not stop individual private business owners from passing rules for their own companies, this led to the complete separation of societies. African Americans had their schools, restaurants and transportation while the white southerners had their own. By 1914 every southern state had segregation laws to keep the whites and blacks separate. In 1870 the fifteenth amendment would give blacks the right to vote, but they would often be stopped by force or by ridiculously outrageous literacy tests. The supreme court finally began to take extra notice of the Jim Crow laws and slowly began changing laws they deemed unfit. The famous court case Plessy v. Ferguson took place in 1896 and ruled “separate but equal”, stating the blacks and whites could attend segregated schools so long as all children received the same materials and necessities3. While this was made a law the schools in black districts often received the hand me downs from the nicer schools and were far from equal. Before World War two most blacks were farmers or worked domestic jobs such as housemaids. By the early 1940s, due to the war-related work, there were a lot of jobs available. However most blacks still weren't given fair wages for the amount of work they took in. After thousands of black workers threatened to march to Washington in protest to demand equal and fair employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt then passed Executive Order 88024. This opened up national defense jobs and