African American History

African American History

Introduction

In the beginning, there has racial discrimination between whites and blacks at extent level. Due to this racial discrimination and some wrong decision supported by Supreme Court on inequality and segregation, numerous riots have been erupted. The Great Migration was also the result of such inequality and segregation. NAACP movement supported the rights of African American on inequality, which has also received recognition and achieved success at some level. Few incidents took place including Emmitt Till and Rosa Parks bus riot acted as awakening in Civil rights movement. Martin King Luther, Jr. played a pivotal role in Civil rights movement. Post-Civil rights era brought some success for African Americans in politics, economics and in social life.

Discussion

Early Twentieth Century

In the early 1900s, life of African American of South was involved in cotton agriculture. African Americans used to grow crops under various agreements and contracts with institutions. Some of them were part of short-term hired labor force for specific work. A lot of farmers were renters, who used to pay rents from their portion of harvests for lands, and tools and supplies at the end of the growing season. Black and white farm labors were paid fair wages in the record of Southern farm. However, presumably whites typically own lands, and blacks were paid less for the same job in the same company compared to whites, and more likely to work for less paying companies.

Segregation on legal rights

In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson case, Supreme Court gave a most controversial decision on the basis for segregation in American society (Anderson, 2003). The decision was to separate the facilities and services for blacks and whites, and those facilities must remain separated until they are equally dispersed. Apart many other laws were introduced in early 1900s Jim Crow Laws were passed which stated that there must be legal segregation of schools, transportation, and accommodation in Southern state. However, equal rights were amongst blacks and whites. The best example of segregation and unequal distribution of facilities and services in early ninetieth century was education system, where provision of facilities in white school in term of raising teachers' salaries and funds were better as compared to blacks, where such improvement has not been seen in Black schools. This resulted in declining in quality of black schools available to African American children.

Black Mobilization

When the demand for labor increased in northern cities, blacks started to mobilize from South. This mobilization was called The Great Migration 1916-1930 (Chay and Munshi, 2011). Blacks would have benefited more if they had worked collectively to achieve same objectives. Although, in places where historical preconditions were already existed, some southern blacks had collectively mobilized to achieve those common goals. The political, social and economic conditions in South caused this Great Migration. At the same time, northern areas were in a phase of economic boom and were facing shortage of labor, which attracted Southern blacks for job opportunities. Northern areas had to experience more severe shortage of labor when United States entered in the ...