The Fight Against Racial Segregation By Victoria Wolcott: Chapter Analysis

The Fight Against Racial Segregation Segregation Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America is a 20th-century novel on historical segregation and discrimination of African Americans by author Victoria W. Wolcott. To understand Wolcott’s story and purpose as an author, it is crucial to first know the history of discrimination towards African Americans in 18th- and 19th-century America. Although slavery was abolished in the 18th century, racial segregation continued to marginalize African Americans in the 19th century. Segregation limited access to facilities, education, medical institutions, job opportunities, housing, recreation centers, bathrooms, and pretty much every service

She states that African American activists and white liberals openly challenged the hypocrisy of American Democracy. To instill the values of freedom and ethic, but to marginalize the African American community and segregate people based on color at the same time contradicted what America was fighting for during the war. Wolcott states that this advocacy challenged society so much that even when Civil Rights organizations tried to open recreation spaces for African Americans, they were faced with physical and violent aggression from racist whites. Many of the recreation spaces that African American communities were in the middle of building were destroyed. Wolcott focuses on the heavy prevalence of violence that not only occurred in the 1940s but also in the campaigns for desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s. One of the biggest demonstrations for recreational desegregation occurred in Coney Island. Wolcott states that this demonstration may have been the inspiration for more because they achieved partial desegregation and helped to teach lessons for future