Washington was very astute in his dealings with the whites of the South. He had an innate ability to forgive them for treating blacks so cruelly and inhumanely. It was important to him to move forward and not dwell on the past. He was sure it was right to slowly assimilate black slaves to freedom rather than thrust it upon them all at once; perhaps he looked at his beliefs as way of allowing only the best of his race to succeed and find their own ways to freedom. Whatever his intent, this would have kept them enslaved to the whites of the South.
Through non-violent protest, famously led by Martin Luther King Jr., racial segregation in the South would be dismantled and equal rights for blacks would be achieved. Lyndon B. Johnson was able to persuade Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was one of the most important U.S. laws on civil rights as it would guarantee equal voting rights, prohibit segregation or discrimination in public venues, and the desegregation of public schools. Soon after Congress would pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This prohibited Southern states from using literacy tests to determine eligibility to vote, which infringed on their voting rights of the 15th amendment.
However the Jim Crow laws were created after the ratification of these amendment for the sole purpose to restrict African Americans from the rights they had been granted. This essay questions why the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments weren't enforced into the Jim Crow
These examples would explain how the lives of Southerners would be ruined and that the country would come to an end if slaves were freed. On page 22, Dew gave portions of a speech, by Governor John J. Petus of Mississippi that was given to the state legislature. In this speech he said, “Secession was the only way to avoid the blight of Black Republicans politics and free Negro morals”, he continued to say that if slaves were freed, Mississippi would become “a cesspool of vice, crime and infamy” (22). Petus was attempting to rationalize that the state would become a haven of criminals if slaves were freed. What he was more than likely concerned with was the idea of losing the vast revenue accrued from slavery, but he used scare tactics to get approval for secession.
In particular anti-harassment policies. Any employer who has not updated its anti-harassment policies since the United States Supreme Court decision in Burlington Industires, Inc. v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton should do so promptly (Mautner, 2000). In Hafford v. Seidner the courts recognized that the overall harassment experienced may not have been based exclusively on his race but also on hostility to him as a ‘black Muslim.’ They showed that the theory of hostile-environment claim is that the cumulative effect of ongoing harassment is abusive. In this case the courts realized that even though the harassment was not all based on race, it was caused by their bias against his religion. All anti-harassment policies should include language prohibiting harassment on the basis of all protected categories and provide an easy to use complaint
Ferguson & Baltimore, Segregation to Separation: Prophecy Coming To Pass It is unfortunate that, the violent racial riots in Ferguson and Baltimore, that occurred after the death of clearly innocent Black youth, has diverted the public debate to ‘need for better policing’. The casualty has been obfuscation more fundamental issues like; century-old public policy of systematic social segregation, increasing economic inequality, and wholesale abdication by the state of social welfare obligations Century-Old Systematic Segregation According to The University of Chicago’s sociologist, Douglas S. Massey, “Housing segregation is both a consequence and a cause of Black poverty. Housing markets distribute not only a place to live, but they
Did Reconstruction succeed or fail? I don’t think that Reconstruction can be described simply as a “failure” or a “success” however “The racial boundaries of nationality had been redrawn, but not eliminated.” (Foner, 576) Reconstruction raised questions like “Did freedom mean simply the absence of slavery, or did it imply other rights for former slaves, and if so, which ones: equal civil rights, the vote, ownership of property?” (Foner, 556) “To begin with freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of slavery-punishment by the lash, the separation of families, denial of access to education, the sexual exploitation of black women by their owner-and sharing in the rights and opportunities of American citizens” (Foner, 557) There were a few positive aspects of Reconstruction such as the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments and the Civil Rights Act and there were negatives aspects such as the Black codes. The black codes were laws passed by the southern state governments that attempted to regulate the lives of former slaves. (Foner, 570). Another unfortunate reality of reconstruction was the system of sharecropping.
He leaned towards the support of the Union, frequently citing that slavery was a political and constitutional issue rather than a morality one. Critics argue that if “the Republican truly believed that slavery was morally wrong, they would have abolished slavery in all of the Union”. Slavery continued to persist even in the reign of the Union. This was because the Union was committed to restrict the expansion of slavery but not abolish it. In his views, Lincoln saw slavery as an unavoidable social evil that was essential to the economy .
This was based on the Plessy vs. Ferguson man, Homer Plessy, who was denied a seat on the train that was reserved for white people only. He challenged the railroad on segregation of blacks and whites. He said that his rights were being violated under the fourteenth amendment. The court said that this was not a violation of the fourteenth amendment because the accommodations were “separate but equal.” As long as the train gave equal seats to both whites and blacks it was okay and not a violation to the fourteenth amendment. The fourteenth amendment says that it guarantees all Americans equal treatment.
PROGRESSION OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN IN U.S. HISTORY: FREEDOM “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free-honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth (Lincoln, Abraham).” The Civil War was revolutionary in many ways. It was the start of what I believe to be the beginning of freedom for African-Americans. President Abraham Lincoln wrote and issued the Emancipation Proclamation which did not end slavery but led to the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment did end slavery by legally abolishing it although, African-Americans were considered free they still did not have all the same equal rights and privileges that whites had.