Throughout 1865-1900, the African American community had to deal with numerous social limitations. They were often attending different schools from white people. When they were attending the same school which was quite scarce, they were given shabby and already worn out supplies. They were indeed segregated, such as being forced to use different bathrooms or being forced to use different water fountains from white people. Throughout 1865-1900, there were many occurrences of public lynching.
The lecture on African Americans in the 1920s by Professor David Canton is very disturbing. His lecture was on the different unjust treatment that African Americans endured. The professor, to me, was trying to make the listener feel the anguish that African Americans did in the 1920s. In some sense he appeared passionate and at times angry about the treatment of African Americans. The government supported this hostile treatment because they believed African Americans were being subversive if they stood up and defended themselves.
Under the Declaration Independence, it says that everyone has the right to life. In America that does not apply to black people. In the early 1920s, there was a large race riot in Tulsa around 300 innocent black people were killed. It started when black shoe shiner Dick Rowland was arrested after being accused of assaulting a white woman in elevator published by a paper eager to win the local circulation war with the title “To Lynch Negro Tonight”. Whites gathered outside the courthouse of where Rowland was being held to lynch him, blacks came from Greenwood to protect Rowland.
Now move forward several years to 1920 segregation is heavily imposed throughout Texas blacks had been separated
During the 1920s many African Americans also had to face violence against them. Riots against black people occurred many times in the 1920s. These riots led to injuries and deaths of African Americans. One example of one of these riots is shown in Source E in a white magazine that says, “A brutish negro made a criminal assault on an unprotected white girls. As a result of this, two officers of the law were killed and many others wounded.
People throughout America had different views on how to end segregation, as each state had its own background with segregation and slavery. Oklahoma although it prided itself on never being a slave state it still had segregation, from the 1920s to when schools and public places began to be integrated in the 1960s. In the earlier phases in segregation practices in Oklahoma you could find the Ku Klux Klan marching through downtown Oklahoma City, people recognized and supported the Klan. The Klan recruited Public High School students to join their patronage against the African American community. The segregation occurring within Oklahoma provided the African American community with many hardships, such as not being able to shop in many stores,
Segregation in the south was at its highest in the 1920s. Segregation laws legally prevented any contact between white and black people in public areas for example, public transportation. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP, was established in 1909 and is the oldest and largest organization for civil rights in America today. During the 1920s, the NAACP made great strides in the fight for equality; this organization was a vital part of the movement to abolish segregation. Segregation also extended to other public areas such as restaurants, medical centers(hospitals), government buildings, entertainment centers,etc.
During the 1920’s, African Americans transposed to cities in the North in order to find better opportunities for work. Areas like Newark, Detroit ,and Chicago, which were mostly all white, presented glittering opportunities for African Americans to receive better jobs. Soon African Americans as well as immigrants, initiated their move to the city areas in the North, and pursued jobs that had better quality work conditions than they received in the South. However, when African Americans and new immigrants came to the North, they were not greeted with equal treatment and were presented with more escalated violent behavior from white Americans as they did in the South, and limitations on job opportunities. Even though African Americans and immigrants were presented more opportunities outside of the South, African Americans and immigrants were still discriminated against from racial tensions because of the Norths fear of African Americans and immigrants gaining equal
The Gilded Age was an age that was directly dependent on the end of the Civil War. Jazz was a major parts of what the 1920s and it helped African Americans realize the where they are at that moment was not what they had to stay at. The end of the Civil War made most of the American populace believe that the lives of slaves would change drastically. American slaves were granted freedom by order of the President and the Congress.
At the turn of the century, blacks have been free for some time and in order for their advancement to freedom to occur they must be able to have a say not only in politics but the economy as well. In order for blacks to succeed in the time of the early 1900's they must stay in the south in order to take control of it. Blacks have the power to control the economy in the south because they are the only ones willing to do the labor. This is why I believe the idea of blacks moving to the north is not what is best for the blacks of the 1900's. This not to say that there are several opportunities for blacks in the north but for people who have done nothing but labor, the south is all that they know.
African Americans face a struggle with racism which has been present in our country before the Civil War began in 1861. America still faces racism today however, around the 1920’s the daily life of an African American slowly began to improve. Thus, this time period was known by many, as the “Negro Fad” (O’Neill). The quality of life and freedom of African Americans that lived in the United States was constantly evolving and never completely considered ‘equal’. From being enslaved, to fighting for their freedom, African Americans were greatly changing the status quo and beginning to make their mark in the United States.
In 1915, many segregation ordinances were in effect for cities such as Baltimore, Louisville, Richmond, Norfolk, Greenville, S.C., and many other cities also experienced this, and some of these segregation ordinances have been upheld in local state courts. Segregation ordinances were primarily put in place to separate two races blacks and whites. However, the African-Americans were the ones getting treated poorly, they were segregated from public spaces and politics. They did not have access to healthcare, education, and housing was scarce at the time. This has been going on for centuries hence Jews and the Germans, but segregation ordinances in the cities were there to preserve peace between two races, blacks and whites.
The segregation of schools based on a students skin color was in place until 1954. On May 17th of that year, during the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, it was declared that separate public schools for black and white students was unconstitutional. However, before this, the segregation of schools was a common practice throughout the country. In the 1950s there were many differences in the way that black public schools and white public schools were treated with very few similarities. The differences between the black and white schools encouraged racism which made the amount of discrimination against blacks even greater.
Du Bois said, “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in land is very bottom of hardships” (“History.com”). This quote means that being a different race or color from most people can actually affect people in many different ways. (Complex) Although, many Americans in the Gilded Age dealt with segregation, which enriched their culture with their differences. Although, there were many contributors such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Ida B. Wells, who all dealt with hardships such as, lack of education and skills, basic civil rights, and lack of equality.
Between 1910 and 1930, African Americans migrated from the rural South to the urban North in search of better economic opportunities and as a means of escaping the racism of the South, but they were disillusioned with what they encountered. To begin, African Americans still experienced racism—segregation, profiling, and unjust law enforcement—In the North, though it was more subtle. As a result, blacks were forced into lower-paying jobs than whites. Thus, while the northern white, middle-class population grew wealthier during the post-WWI economic boom and were moving to the suburbs, blacks and other poor, working-class groups were left in the cities, the state of which grew progressively
