African Americans Sociology

African Americans have always struggled with fitting into the nation but that doesn’t mean we should categorize them as second class citizens. We have many African Americans today that have well structured lives and have good income, but the percentage rates weigh down the success we see in them today. Poverty rates for African Americans (26%) in 2014 were more than two and a half times that of non-Hispanic whites (10%)(Feeding America, 4). African Americans were and are still treated as second class citizens socially, economically, and politically.

In the social factor, African Americans were dealing with increases in segregation and discrimination. Within this significant fact, it closely relates to other factors such as Jim Crow laws which

There was a very minimal amount of legally enforced segregation in the Northern states compared to the South. The Jim Crow laws meant the restriction of African Americans using white American’s things, such as bathrooms, schools, transportation, restaurants and many others. This law was legally accepted after the case of "Plessy v. Ferguson", involving an African American who challenged the Jim Crow laws. The Supreme Court ordered that separation was reasonable as long as they were equal, but this was wrong. Ironically, far more cases of discrimination happened in the Southern states in comparison to the Northern states. Later on were the Jim Crow laws which were enforced in the Southern states which led to the tragedy of lynching. Lynching was practiced by an infamous group known as the Ku Klux Klan and became a severe threat to African Americans as time went on. They targeted African Americans who showed any sign of disrespect towards whites. However, they also did it for no reason as black people were beaten or tortured if they weren 't in contact or became disrespectful towards the whites. “Because of Central High School I had to leave Little Rock and my family, because the Ku Klux Klan had a price on my head -- $10,000 dead and $5,000 alive.” (Scholastic, 31) We can truly say that the social factor includes many others

African Americans in the South worked in Agriculture, while in the North, African Americans worked industrial jobs. This was a cause of the World War, where thousands of African Americans moved to great industrial cities in order to work in the war industry. The economic rise of the 1920 's also attracted African Americans to the North. From the World War on, African Americans migrated to the north, where they were offered industrial jobs. The working conditions were much better than the working conditions in the South, where they were paid far less in comparison to the North. Salary given to Northern African Americans was on average 50% of the pay of white workers. This is another reason as to why African Americans remained second class citizens. Although their lives were reasonably better in the North, there was still an element of discrimination among the industrial