African American Struggles: Civil Movement

 People who identify and live in a marginalized community have faced discrimination throughout years of social or political inequality. No matter what region you are in, culture, and even with what language you speak there will always be a marginalized community living within these categories. As a society it’s important we recognize marginalized communities in order to bring awareness and equality at all levels to these communities. In the United States there are many communities that face discrimination, however most of these acts of inequality are rooted in history that began centuries ago. African Americans have experienced and still face political and social inequality due to the Transatlantic slave trade and forced migration, this created the perception that people had on Africans in America, they became one of the largest marginalized communities. During the years of the Civil Rights Movement African Americans faced the most discrimination while trying to dismantle the years of social and pollical inequality.

African Americans have experienced many actions of racism and micro aggression during and after the Slave Trade that took place in 1502. Africans were first brought to the Caribbean Islands, Central and South America by Spaniards and the Portuguese but didn’t reach direct trade route to the Americas until 1518. Africans brought were mostly forced to work as slaves, but a small percentage reached Mexico and created their own town, San Lorenzo de Los Negros where they lived free. The other percentage of Africans who were brought to Colonial North America had no choice of their destination and or knowledge of where they were to arrive, the 400,000 Africans brought to North America were brought either directly from Africa or the Caribbean. 300,000 of these Africans arrived in 1675-1775 were described as “Saltwater Negros” (Kelley & Lewis, 2000, p. 71) due to enduring the Atlantic Crossing. Once they reached Colonial North America, they realized they would work at others’ expense that wouldn’t ever benefit themselves and with the knowledge that further generations will have to endure and inherit the unfree status. “The servitude facing African newcomers was the horrible outgrowth of unprecedented economic warfare on an international scale.” (Kelley & Lewis, 2000, p.78) The Europeans and Spaniards knew that the more that they would expire overseas the more battles to supremacy and conflict between monarchies and colonies all over the world. In the early 1930s the Great Depression caused income to get dropped from 81 billion to 40 billion, nearly getting dropped 50 percent. Kelley and Lewis (2000) explained that African Americas during the great depression didn’t receive as much support from the government compared to a white person, they suffered a great amount of losses like how more than two million black farmers prices for cotton being dropped due to the many inventions and devices that reduced the amount of labor that would usually be needed. The Stock Market crash didn’t help anyone who were going through their own personal economic crisis, but it certainly did not help with African Americans to find a job, unemployment in Black urban areas became 50 percent more persistent than the rate of white unemployment, could this be because of the lack of jobs as a whole or the employers refusing to employ black people. The small percentage of Black workers had specific jobs in which they were accepted like factories, street cleaning, garbage collection, and or anything with demanding physical labor, black woman who were employed held domestic service jobs like maids, cooks, and or house keepers. Although these jobs seemed more demanding, these were most of the jobs offered to black people but since everyone was going through a financial crisis, white workers began to compete for these more traditional black jobs creating a shift in dynamic. Kelley and Lewis explained the state of what black workers endured saying, “The most violent efforts to displace black workers occurred on southern railroads where the white brotherhood, as their unions were called, intimidated, attacked, and murdered black woman workers in order to take their jobs” (2000, p.411-412). White people in south began to express how black workers having a job before a white person cannot surely be how it must be so they would rally and protest with signs with written slogans with slurs causing a rise in aggression and attacks of black people in the United States during the 1930s.

During the Civil War many African Americans underwent many occurrences of violence racism, and segregation more than ever before, this is due to the Jim Crow laws that were set up by the white man but even before World War II, African Americans fought for full equality. Lawson (2014) explained this saying “Rather than freedom, the end of the war produced bloody race riots and a continuation of Jim Crow practices.” (pg. 2). In the act of the Jim Crow Laws this created segregation between black people and white people and along with unfair treatment in many aspects. This was due to the principle of “separate but equal” (Lawson, 2014, pg.4) in the armed forces, public education, and other public accommodations/settings. Black Americans were left severely affected and exposed by this principle, Black Americans who wanted to enlist in the war were not accepted by the all-white selective service centers, even Red Cross didn’t want to mix the blood donations of white and black people. The government as a whole was responsible for the extreme isolation and segregation between white people and black people, the supreme court and presidential administrations added to the fire of the Jim Crow laws. The Governor gave their reasons on why Black people couldn’t exist as humans in America, saying they didn’t incorporate in the creating or settling of America. When in reality African Americans and many other people of color were the real predecessors of the creation and land of the United States. Lawson (2014) described what the Supreme Court was doing to exclude Black people, what they did was to breakdown the little to no equal rights black people had access to like education, housing, and voting (Pg.36). Even though many parts of the government were for Jim Crow laws and continuing the years of segregation, as humans we now see the progression that is possible and in this case the Truman Administration was what started the end of this issue and especially to the government level. President Harry S. Truman supported Black Americans by passing an anti-lynching bill along with this he showed a great amount of encouragement for Black Americans political rights (Pg.37). Though this meant that Black Americans had more political freedom and had already begun to use the rights they received they still went through amount of racial injustice.

In the United States many communities went through inequalities and discrimination, but African Americans have faced far more in this aspect. The Transatlantic Slave Trade created the migration of African Americans which was the first act of inequality of rights done by colonizers. Doing this they forced them to leave their home and forcing them to be their slaves or work for them for little to no payment. The history of each marginalized community is important to understand and recognize because it can help bring a bigger picture of why there is still systemic racism even after slaves got freed. During the beginning of the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, African Americans were still getting adjusted with their new appointed rights and so were other Americans. Even though these rights may have been given to African Americans a lot of White Americans did not accept the notion, which created even greater issues of discrimination which was just the start of years of microaggression and systemic racism that African Americans would face in the future.

References

Kelley, R. D. G., & Lewis, E. (2000). To make our world anew : a history of African Americans (1st ed.). Oxford University Press.

Lawson, S. F. (2014). Running for freedom: civil rights and Black politics in America since 1941 (Fourth edition.). Wiley.