How far do you agree that African Americans were treated as second class citizens in the USA in 1950? I agree completely that African Americans were treated as ‘second class’ citizens, I agree with this because of racial segregation, mostly in the form of Jim Crow laws. These laws are the way a law has been brought in to discriminate coloured people. In the southern states, legal segregation was widespread. Also, the vast majority of black Americans were disenfranchised by grandfather clauses and literacy tests which made it very hard for black Americans to vote.
However, generally the Northern blacks were somewhat better off than the Southern blacks in 1945. In 1945, African Americans in the North had different conditions then the South. Firstly, there were political differences. Only 15% of black people in the southern states had the right to vote. Black people had the legal right to vote as there were measures that were put into place to prevent the south African Americans from voting by using the poll tax and literacy tests.
How far did conditions for black Americans improve in the period 1945-56? Civil right was a major issue in America during 1945-56, especially in the Deep South. This was because conditions of African Americans didn’t improve much, it was mainly the start to any change that happened, with some limited progress. The first issue is ‘Jim crow’ laws; this was a law in the Southern states of America that introduced segregation between black and white people, by passing laws which denied them access to white facilities. Many of these facilities were, education, healthcare, transport, cinemas, restaurants and churches and even housing and estates were segregated.
WW1 was a turning point in increasing racial equality between black and white Americans to a lesser extent. During WW1 black people made contributions to the war effort by moving north to work in factories making war goods. However violence occurred where they moved as competition with the whites for jobs was rife. In the short term with competition and violence intensifying, the Ku Klux Klan restarted in the south and lynchings became common. It would seem that racial equality had not improved, but worsened.
In the early 20th Century even though black people were no longer slaves they still remained second-class citizens. There were many factors that contributed to black people remaining second-class citizens under the white supremacy. For example the Jim Crow Laws. Between 1890 and 1910, southern states introduced legal segregation. This was achieved by passing local laws, which denied black Americans access to facilities used by white Americans.
Although the end of the American civil war marked the end of slavery for African Americans, it did not mark their acceptance and equality with white people. Many southern states resented losing their slaves and were determined to keep African Americans as second class citizens. In 1950 segregation was in full force, meaning African Americans had separate churches, public transport, theatres, schools, hotels, swimming pools and many other facilities to white people. Segregation also applied to where people lived, so African Americans could only live in certain areas separate from white people, with these areas being much worse than the white suburbs, despite the separate but equal principle. Even when this was challenged in the Plessy vs Ferguson Supreme Court case the separate but equal principle was found to be constitutional.
In the South, $4.5billion was spent creating factories that produced war goods. At first, black Americans were unable to get jobs in the war industry due to racism. A. Philip Randolph threatened to campaign against the government unless they forced industries to change. So Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practices Commission in 1941 which forced industries not to discriminate on the grounds of ‘race, creed, colour or national origin’ when deciding who to employ. This allowed many Black Americans to get jobs and played a major role in the country’s war effort.
Nothing back then was black and white for former slaves and the white Southerners. The answers took time to get to each and every one of those citizens. Those answers came in the form of more blood being spilt and discrimination running rampant throughout the South. Over this course of time, civility finally became the norm through these struggles you are about to read about. Race Relations after the Civil War 3 The way white Southerners made it difficult on former slaves in the South was to create what was called “Black Codes”.
From racial profiling to other issues such as affirmative action, police brutality against minorities and the history of slavery and the rising resentment against immigrants.” (Anup Shah 1998) I think this really does suit racism in the United States. Yes it has come a long way from what it used to be like but we still have problems just like this all over the world. Way back in the day American people didn’t have much racism towards them but Americans were very racist towards everyone who was not American. They had all sorts of racial groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, save our state, and gay groups. These groups of hate have died down over the years but there are still a few out
I agree that African Americans were treated as second class citizens in the USA in 1950 due mainly to the way they were treated and public attitude towards them. However, by this time attitudes were in fact changing due to President Truman’s stance on black rights and the 1948 election as well as post second world war. After the Second World War, the American public were informed of how Jewish and other victims of Hitler and the Nazis were treated. This made Americans questions whether the segregation of the African American community was morally right and many were scared that it could lead to treating them similarly to the victims of the Second World War. Attitudes were beginning to shift.