How Africans Americans Have Worked to End Isolation Essay

Africans had fought very hard to obtain equal rights in the United States. After the civil war the country begin their journey in America History with period known as Reconstruction (Bowls 2011, 1. 1). There are several reasons why the nation went to war, and one of the most important was the right to continue the practice of slavery. From 1865 to the present, African Americans have worked to end their isolation through legislation, protest, and major contributions to society. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation did not free the slaves but it was the first step toward making this a reality (Bowles, 2011, 1. 1). The proclamation would only apply only to states in rebellion. The Emancipation proclamation is one of those stupendous facts in human history with marks not only an era in the progress of the nation, but an approach in history of the world (Journal of Blacks pg. 108-109). The civil war did not bring an end to racial hatred and violence in the south. Neither military leaders nor politicians can change the ingrained cultural beliefs of the people (Bowles, 2011 1. para10). After 1865 slavery could no longer structure relations between the races (1999, Segregation and Desegregation). The Black Codes codified some of these feelings when 1865 southern states government created legislation that restricted and control the lives of the ex-slaves (Bowel 2011 1. 1 para10). The Black Codes restricted African Americans to married other than their own race, they could not carried guns, they could only work on farms, and if they did not follow this rules they could put in jail or put them to enforced work which was the same as slavery (Bowles, 2011 1. para10). The president at the time supported this codes which made more difficult the lives of the ex-slaves. Meanwhile, many blacks who enlisted in the military encountered blatant discrimination while in the service and, them after risking their lives for the preservation of the free world, retuned to a society that continued to deem them second-class citizens (Levy, 1998). The only significant racial reform enacted by the federal government in the decade after the end of World War 11 was the desegregation of the armed forces order by President Truman in 1948. To some blacks, even this represented a pyrrhic victory (Levy, 1948). African Americans also suffer from segregation. â€Å"Segregation; is the practice by law or custom, of separating groups, spatially according to race, class, or ethnicity† (Segregation and Desegregation, 2001). Racial segregation began after the end of slavery, when new laws barred blacks from many occupations, restricted voting rights, and designated separate public facilities for black and white populations (Segregation and Desegregation, 2011). Segregation existed somewhat differently in the North and the South of the country. Different conditions in the North and South led to different kinds of social organization among African communities (Segregation and Desegregation, 2011). â€Å"Segregation in a legal sense began with laws separating blacks and whites in education† (Segregation, 2010). Although blacks paid taxes as whites, they did not receive funding for their schools and they had to rely on church and missionary organizations to create their own schools (segregation, 2010). A law that emerged was separate facilities for blacks in all areas, assigning African Americans a separate and degraded status in transportation, dining, places of entertainment, and even in cemeteries (Segregation, 2010). The customs and laws associated with segregation created a deeply entrenched culture of white supremacy, which radicalized every aspect of life in the South. The laws prevented blacks and whites from joining together in union meetings, political-reform organizations, or on a social level, thus creating a one-party (Democratic) â€Å"solid South† impervious to change. African Americans continually resisted segregation and white supremacy but with few Southern white allies (Segregation, 2010). The Civil Right Movement The biracial system in the South kept many African Americans impoverished and disenfranchised, it also created conditions that facilitated the development of a strong black middle class and cultural institutions. Black schools and especially the black church enabled the development of African American leadership, and became the base of the Civil Rights Movement. In the North, however, were run by white teachers and administrators and did not foster racial pride as many did in the South. For Northern blacks, then, civil rights issues focused on discrimination and unequal access rather than formal desegregation. In the South, the Civil Rights Movement focused primarily on ending segregation (Segregation and Desegregation 2011). The Civil Rights Movement emerged in the 1950s, when the number of middle-class and skilled blacks was almost forty percent of the Southern black population. The earliest victory came in 1954, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, that racially â€Å"separate educational facilities are inherently unequal† (Segregation and Desegregation 2011). The following year the court ordered that African Americans can attend to white school. The school systems did not accepted this and reacted with violence that the federal military often had to go to the schools and protect the black children who attempt to attend school (Segregation and Desegregation 2011). Because of this events the â€Å"Court-ordered desegregation prompted â€Å"white flight† from public schools in many areas, as families with the financial resources to do so enrolled their children in private schools or moved to mostly-white suburban school districts† (Segregation and Desegregation 2011). On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged black seamstress boarded a Montgomery, Alabama bus to take her home. Several stops later the bus driver requests her to give up her sit to a white passenger. She refuses, the bus driver called the police and she was arrested. At the Police Station she told the officer â€Å"I didn’t think I should have to stand up, after I had paid my fare and occupied a seat I didn’t think I should have to give it up† (Levy, 1998). The effort to abolish other forms of segregation, initiated in 1955 when seamstress Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat in the white section of a Montgomery bus, continued through the 1960s. The movement was led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , who developed a philosophy of nonviolent activism based on principles of Christian belief and the passive resistance teachings of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and American philosopher Henry David Thoreau†(Segregation and Desegregation 2011). Martin Luther King, Jr. as the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement for equal rights for African Americans that took place during the 1950s and 1960s. Martin Luther King first became aware of racial segregation when, at the age of six, a white friend was not allowed to play with him anymore. Throughout his childhood and young adulthood he experienced segregation and racism: he and his family were required to sit in separate places in stores and on buses. King and other black children could not use the same swimming pools or public parks as white children (Martin Luther King Jr. 009). In 1954, Martin Luther King took a job as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white man, the Montgomery civil rights community decided to hold a bus boycott to get rid of the law that black passengers had to sit at the back of the bus and yield seats to white passengers. They also decided to form a new organization and elect a new leader to include all the different people and groups who supported the boycott. King was asked to lead this new organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association, and he agreed (Martin Luther King Jr. 2009). African American had struggled through time fighting for their rights. They had come a long way obtaining the same rights as every other citizen in the United States. African Americans finally can walk freely in the country they had overcome adversity. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks are only few that had help on the civil right movement and these people had been very important in history to abolish Segregation.