Race In America During The 1950's Essay

Cox 3

Race in America during the 1950?s

Racism is prejudice against someone of a different race based on the belief that one?s own race is superior.1 Blacks have been fighting against racial discrimination for centuries and during the 1950?s, the struggle entered the national consciousness.2 After the Civil War ended in 1865, blacks gained their freedom; however, they did not gain equality in the eyes of the whites. The Great Migration, which was an influx of blacks moving to the North, resulted from harsh Jim Crow laws in the South and better opportunities in the North. Blacks strived for equality and fought for their natural rights but struggled to find their place in the white world. Ralph Ellison?s Invisible Man shows that during the 1950?s, although blacks moved North for social and economic freedom, it was still necessary to fight to achieve these freedoms due to racism, segregation, and the struggle to cement their individual identities.

In the mid-1600?s, most American colonies passed laws making slavery a more permanent system. These slave codes made offspring inherit the slave status. It made slavery more race based?any non-Christian coming to America would become a slave (most were black). Therefore, the whites

The uproar became men against men, and the side with the most guns and members would succeed.31 The Brotherhood had organized it all, and the narrator had unknowingly made himself a tool. When confronted by a black nationalist, he responded by saying: ?I am no longer their brother, they wanted a race riot and I am against it. The more of us who are killed, the better they like it.?32 The narrator finally figured out that he did not have to run from the whites anymore. He thought it was absurd to die at the hands of a black man who was full of hatred and confusion over the nature of reality that seemed controlled solely by