AFRICAN AMERICANS

African Americans

Historical Progression of African Americans

Introduction

African Americans have suffered and struggled throughout their history due to a variation of factors. One main factor involved in causing this is due to the racial prejudice and hate crimes carried out against them. In the United States, there have been movements and laws to protect these individuals from such acts of hatred; but injustice continues today as it has in past years. Although, hate crimes are against the law, individuals continue to commit hate crimes against African Americans. Hate crimes are "crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, arson, and destruction, damage or vandalism of property". At present, there are groups of people that hate African Americans and commit such acts to remove them from American society. Laws may control behavior to a degree, but education and support programs are the instruments for changes in people's racial attitudes.

Description

On New Year's Day 1863 the President Abraham Lincoln forced through the 13th Amendment that was a law basically making slavery illegal. At the time this faced a mix reaction as the southern and northern states had different views on slavery. In basic terms the north was more favourable towards the slaves and following their victory in the civil war they could create anti-slavery laws. The southern states, which include Texas and Mississippi, were on the whole pro-slavery. Of course there were many exceptions to the rule in both north and south. The major problem facing the blacks after the Emancipation was the lack of infrastructure allowing them to improve their own lives. Some help was provided by the government but on the whole not enough. There was very little education and many of the slaves had never read a book or written a sentence. Competing against white men for jobs was always going to be a difficult task and few did it successfully. During the Blacks' time as slaves they had always been provided with enough food and shelter to live by their masters, in the period immediately following Emancipation the blacks basically did not know how to fend for themselves.

The 14th and 15th Amendments are incredibly important in determining how the lives of blacks improved. They were an attempt by the government to level the playing field within America. It can be said that the 14th Amendment (1866) was far more general and it was simply encouraging states to enfranchise people, the amendment states that "State representation in Congress reduced proportionally to number of voters disenfranchised." This meant that if people of voting age were not allowed voting then the state power in Congress would be reduced. The 15th Amendment (1870) appears to be a response to the failure of the 14th to allow Black men and women to vote.

As a result of the amendments, many Blacks had the vote. This resulted in many positive steps forward for the ...