The Role Of African Americans In The Civil Rights Movement

1264 Words6 Pages

Ashley Miller
HIST 202B
Timothy Paynich
3/7/16
HUMAN Rights How much of history would change if African Americans never went through adversity? Between 1877 (End of Reconstruction) and the 1950’s (Beginning of the Civil Rights Movement) African Americans went through immense hardships. They had to fight numerous times in order to gain their rights and even be counted as “human”. During the Harlem Renaissance many African Americans arose and found ways to create and show what they were going through. A famous African American author and civil rights leader by the name of James Weldon Johnson “was deeply committed to exposing the injustice and brutality imposed on African Americans throughout the United States, especially in the Jim Crow South” …show more content…

Not only did they have to go through lynching but Jim Crow. Some of these rules included: “A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male. Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. Blacks were introduced to whites, never whites to blacks and if a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the back” (Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia). African Americans were treated like animals. They had to follow rules and behave in a manner that wouldn’t get them in trouble, but more specifically lynching. Owing to Johnson for making such an impact during this time era. Johnson joined the “staff of the interracial National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was a key figure, perhaps the key figure, in making the NAACP a truly national organization capable of mounting the attack that eventually led to the dismantling of the system of segregation by law” (James Weldon Johnson’s Life and Career). Its hard to imagine how African Americans felt living with this around them all the time, to know if a white person had something against you. They could claim you did something you didn’t even do and you could pay the price with your life. What if there was never a time African Americans had to face the Jim Crow laws and lynching, how would it be now? How would history have changed? No one would be better than another, therefore allowing human rights for everyone. The tensions would disappear and each would respect the other, living in