African American women were treated even worse than men. Many of them were stuck in domestic service jobs with low pay due to their treatment as second class citizens. However, there was one major improvement in the south – the FEPC in 1941. This ended discrimination against blacks in the workplace so they had equal employment opportunities to whites. Treatment of African Americans as second class citizens was still bad regarding economics in the north, but not as severe as in the south.
It was intended to last only one year after the civil but lasted longer due to surprising support and need for its services. This was a very large help to black Americans as it gave them basic living conditions even thought they had very little money after living as slaves. Sharecropping was a system where a landowner allowed a tenant to use some of their land in return for some of the crop produced there. This, for many black Americans, would have been like slavery again except that they could not get whipped for working slowly, but it would show off in their pay of crops. The advantages of this were that ex-slaves would have a chance of a job, and the fact that women could work on arable land, where the rights would only be available to male.
African Americans could still be treated like slaves and not treated like human beings. America would still be a very segregated place. Freedom Summer was a very dark time in American history but all in all, America has turned out pretty good. It’s no doubt that America was not the most favorable place during this time period for most,
A major shift in the White-Americans’ City’s demographics evoked tension between White-Americans and African-Americans. This turned out be one of the bloodiest riots in the nation’s history. This evidence from before 1945 sparked the lack of improvement for African-Americans between the years of 1945 and 1955. However, the difference between the North and the South was that in the South segregation remained, and African-Americans were barred from all cinemas, restaurants and hotels; but eating, transport and education were not segregated in the North. As a result, it is fair to say that in this aspect, in the North there was some improvement for African-Americans after 1945.
During the year 1945-55 there was limited progress in improving the status of African-Americans because of segregation, limited education, money, the law and voting rights. Segregation was seen in all walks of life during this period, including the Army. African-Americans were not treated equally due to the Plessy v. Ferguson and Cunningham v. The Board of Education ruling of Separate But Equal. This meant that segregation was not seen as unconstitutional if the segregated areas are equal. All of this was put in place to ensure that it was incredibly difficult for African-Americans to improve their status.
Therefore they had no rights as citizens. In the years after the war they did gain some improvements and began to protest for more, but by 1955 this was not enough to make a difference. Black Americans were subjected to segregation. The ‘Jim Crow’ laws meant that they had to use separate diners, separate schools and separate transport. This was
How far is it accurate to describe black Americans as second class citizens in the years 1945-55? [30] During this time period it is rational to see the Black American community as second class citizens. Despite the fact America was making changes, particularly in the Northern states in order to make America a place of equality, there were still issues that caused the disenfranchisement of the Black community. The North and the south couldn’t have been further apart on the matter of fairness. As in the North segregation was almost none existent so racial etiquette was more flexible than in the South where legal segregation, caused by the Jim Crow law was very much everywhere, which means that in the South, Black Americans could be seen as second class citizens.
For example the Brown case of 1954 which overturned the Plessy vs fergueson case which stated that it was fine to be segregated if it is ‘Separate but equal’. This would be hugely influential in improving the lives of Black Americans as it meant that the clause could no longer be manipulated in different areas of life such as unequal public facilities such as transport and education due to the De Jure change. However the success of the NAACP was not a great success as it did not change De Jure victories into De Facto. An example is just after they won the Brown case, the NAACP had to fight another case in the courts which claimed that desegregation in education would occur ‘with all deliberate speed.’ This limited the improvement for Black Americans as it was too vague to enforce change, this was shown when in 1955 fewer than 750 out of 6300 schools in the South were desegregated. It also led to a greater opposition to civil rights on a local level with the creation of the White Citizens council, boasting 60000 members by 1955 which were later successful in intimidating Black Americans and ensuring that De Jure could not be enforced to form De Facto change.
Although in most places in the north they’re was no longer rigid racial etiquette they were aloud to mix with whites, but it remained still that they were poorer and so lived in more undesirable places with poor living conditions so they never really mixed with white Americans anyway. This shows that the Second World War never really had an effect on the lives of African Americans because they still had to deal with major segregation in the south. Although the laws may have changed the attitudes of most White people didn’t change because they were so used to their standard ways of living. However there were changes of attitudes by the government as on December 5, 1946, Truman established by executive order the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. The committee was instructed to investigate the status of civil rights in the United States and propose measures to strengthen and protect the civil rights of American citizens.
In the article Gregory and Sajek say, “…poor African Americans living in a supposed culture of poverty were hardly cultureless”. After hearing in our class discussion about the “one drop rule”, I was surprised how the one drop of blood law was passed. It is a principle of racial classification, asserting that any person with even one African ancestor is considered to be black. I do not like the fact that racism still exists. Maybe those brave revolutionaries such as, Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez, and Rosa Parks did help in calming the racism a bit, but the way things look, it seems like racism will never