African-American Struggle

African-American Struggle

Introduction

In order to understand that chronicles of African-American's struggle for civil-rights, it is important to look into the discrimination, hardships, assimilation and prejudice they faced. Civil rights movement was not just a movement to get a front seat at bus or to vote but it was fought for being treated as human beings and to be granted the basic civil and human rights promised to every human by the Bill of Rights.

Discussion

The Black Codes were statutes passed by the former Confederate states between 1865 and 1908 regulating the status of approximately four million newly freed black slaves. Though the codes differed from state to state, all were intended to control and suppress freedom, ensure a supply of cheap labor, and continue white supremacy. Between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Civil Rights movement (from 1877 through the 1950s), state statutes were passed that enforced racial segregation. The first gathering of the Colored people was witnessed in 1883 named The National Convention of Colored People, The Black National Baptist Convention, and the start of the National Baptist Publishing House. Racism was the major concern of these organizations which was not confined in the Southern states anymore. These conditions urged the National Negro Convention adopting a constitution which formed an African-American League (Hughey, 2012). It was a non-partisan civil rights organization which aimed legal restoration of complaints and grievances.

Between 1906 and 1909, the federal government under President Theodore Roosevelt transferred over 2.5 million acres of land from tribal control to national forests. In 1921, Congress formally provided funds for the health care of African Americans through the Snyder Act. In 1924, Congress bestowed full citizenship rights on all African Americans, despite the protests of many African American people who did not want to become U.S. citizens. In 1950, the official federal twin policies of Termination and Relocation were instituted with the goal of lessening federal responsibility to African Americans through relocating mass numbers from reservation land bases to urban centers. African Americans were the most important agents in developing Reconstruction. It was the first event of interracial democracy in America. The plan for Reconstruction put forward by Andrew Johnson, which included right to vote for Blacks, to hold office and implementing the rules of equal rights provision, was rejected by the Southern governments and faced opposition from many violent groups like Ku Klux Klan and other (Mintz, 2009).1920s is said to ...