Reconstruction Amendments: Hard Road To Freedom

Improved Essays
In spite of the Reconstruction Amendments, there were many obstacles and challenges, for the physical liberation of all slaves, their integration into society and the development of interracial relationships. On the book, “Hard Road to Freedom” it states, “In late September 1906, a white mob moved through the black community, killing and burnig at random...The White House and Congress refused to move against lynching or to protect civil rights in the South, and it was common for high-level government officials pubicly to express racist beliefs”(Horton 215). This shows that during the first half of the twentieth century the condition of the black community was dreadful and unjustified. Under those circumstances, in their effort to cope with

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    The Black Leaders of the 1890s-1920s lived in a very different America, one with universal segregation, strictly enforced vagrancy laws, fully segregated schools, and widespread hostility toward Blacks. Thus, the Black leaders of this time period had to not attempt to challenge the oppressive system to have any hope of communicating their ideas without subjugation. The Black leaders of the 1950s-1960s took a more confrontational approach, one allowed to them by the achievements of the Black leaders before them. They sought to directly challenge southern segregation and dismantle the system of systematic oppression under which they lived.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In the book ‘Trouble in Mind,’ author Leon F. Litwack illustrates the hard times of slaves during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. During this time there were major hardships that African Americans had to encounter; lynching, racism, and the fight for freedom. Litwack doing his research on slave hard times since 1961 studied how hard the Jim Crow laws were mentally, and physically hard for African Americans. The book, ‘Trouble in Mind’ starts at the end of Reconstruction when the idea of whites “Redemption” spread along the south. This caused new dreams of citizenship for African Americans and freedom to die of an ungrateful death, and most likely the hardest time for African American life since slavery.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    "When the politicians and businessmen extended rail lines into the smallest of southern hamlets in the years after Reconstruction, they had wanted simply to connect the region 's fields and forests to the North 's great factories. But the process also provided Negroes with a thousand escape routes. It was never easy to leave, to slip free of piles of debts, to shutter homes and abandon lands, to say good-bye to family and friends. But a hundred thousand colored people did just that…” Years prior to the early 20th century, much of African American culture was centered around plantations and domestic work in the South.…

    • 1090 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Derek Catsman and Thomas Bruscino are distinguished and reliable authors who in two of their recent works- addressed the past intolerance white americans showed towards a different race(s) in the nineteenth century. Thomas Bruscino wrote, A Nation Forged in War, to tell the tale of how an awful situation led America to gradually accept and appreciate ALL americans. Bruscino next applies this knowledge and analyzes how this unification happened. Next, Derek Catsman expresses his views about one of the most famous protests of the civil rights movements; the freedom rides. In this he reveals the shocking mistreatment african americans faced during the reconstruction era.…

    • 1133 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Southern Horrors Summary

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages

    An Analysis of Southern Horrors and Other Writings In the period immediately following the Civil War, racial tensions were extremely high in the South. During this period of Reconstruction, the majority of white citizens still fostered deep hatred towards recently freed African Americans. As a result, lynch law prevailed. Hundreds of African Americans were viciously murdered, as the government failed to step in and stop the killings.…

    • 1054 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Great Migration was a massive movement of African Americans from the South of the United States to the North with the largest amount coming in 1915 to 1920 of over 500,000 Blacks. African Americans left the miserable condition of the South that included low wages, racism, and horrible violence, and headed up to “The Promised Land” of the North where it was believed they could find refuge or even start over again. Black Protest and the Great Migration by Eric Arnesen is a history of documents telling the story of the African American searching for equality through the eyes of political leaders, newspapers, and regular civilians of the time between 1916 – 1925. This book teaches how the Great Migration was another source of hope that was…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ida B. Wells-Barnett chronicles the gruesome attack on the civil rights of a people who have suffered far too much at the hands of a corrupt system in her work Mob Rule in New Orleans. In these retelling of the events that occurred on July 24th, 1900, it is evident that justice, in the hands of a racist and oppressive force, can never truly be justice. The most appalling realization that any reader of this work may come to is that one-hundred and eighteen years later, in our current American climate, the crimes committed against black Americans and other people of color still occur, and even more horrifying is the politicized, often racist media response and coverage that follows these events. As I moved through this text, I was continually disturbed by the experiences that three malicious bluecoats caused for countless African American members of their community, and how at the end of the day the perpetrators of murder and crime got off scot-free. Through this analysis, it is my goal to connect the past with the present to understand the racism that still affects our systems of government and police forces.…

    • 1211 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    *"For Africa to me...is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place" (Angelou). The treatment of African Americans in the United States has historically been that of great injustice. They have suffered through the hardships of slavery, segregation, and the recurring racism that is still prominent in society today.…

    • 1257 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Struggle for Black Equality” by Harvard Sitkoff, summarizes the key elements in the fight for the civil rights of African Americans from 1954-1980. The book was set up in chronological order, each chapter embodying the new step to gain equality. The first chapter is titled “Up from slavery,” it consists of the small actions that took place slowly to assure the equal rights. By the end of the first chapter, the concept of equal rights was introduced more prominently, opening people's eyes to the problem. Nevertheless, there was still doubt in the system and people who did not agree.…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Equality has always been a serious issue regards racial segregation in the South of the United States, especially in the Jim Crow Era. African-Americans were dehumanized and considered inferior compared to White Americans. They were treated unfairly and restricted in public places for their rights and resources were stripped. Based on the two autobiographical memoirs, Black boy and Separate Pasts, the authors have expressed their own opposite respective experiences of Blacks and Whites to show how the Constitution rights were overturned.…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Eric Foner’s “A Short History of Reconstruction” is an updated, abridged edition of “Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution.” This book redefines how the Reconstruction Era is viewed, in ways historians have not done before. Foner chronologically starts with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 to validate his statement that “Reconstruction was not only a specific time period, but also the beginning of an extended historical process: the adjustment of American society to the end of slavery.” Starting his novel with this allows him to stress “the Proclamation’s importance in uniting…grass-roots black activity and the newly empowered national state” and state that this period is the beginning of “the adjustment of American society to…

    • 1499 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Laura Wexler the author of “Fire in a Canebrake” gives a very detailed nonfictional narrative of an event which is proclaimed to be the last mass lynching in American history. Wexler shines some light on the part of American history that isn’t talked about as much, the Civil Rights era. The author captivates the thin line of racial tension as well as racial ignorance that can be felt throughout everyday life in most rural cities in the south. The book takes place in Monroe, Georgia, a rural city that is roughly forty miles east of Atlanta. The city of Monroe from what Wexler has written is no different than any other rural town in America in 1946.…

    • 1266 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Comparison Between Good Negro - Bad Negro and Negrophobia Bauerlein’s Negrophobia was solely based amongst restrictive laws set in place against the African American community during this era and how the effects of false media against African Americans led to the slaughter in the streets of downtown Atlanta. Bauerlein discussed how well-off, or “elite” African Americans relied on the beliefs of colorism to keep them safe from the harm of the riots,as well as their social and economic classes would be seen as respectable in the eyes of white supremacy. Instead, the media portrayed African Americans as a generalized evil, causing an outlash and targeting all and any black seen roaming the streets or attempting escape from the brutality of…

    • 1064 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even upon their laggard release from slavery in 1865, freedmen were far from equality, justice, and most importantly, freedom. Not only is the meaning of freedom extrapolated by Eric Foner within his textbook, Give Me Liberty! An American History, it is also analyzed. Throughout Chapter 15, Foner analyzes post-civil war oppressions and injustices placed not only on black men but also including black women. To maintain credibility…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sectional conflicts between the north and the south before 1865 lead to the commencement of the Civil War in 1860. Differences on issues such as States versus government power and the issue of nullification arouse causing increasing tensions in congress. Differences between economies also became problematic as the North was primarily industrious while the south 's main economic focus was in agriculture. Although the primary cause of the war was the pro slavery south compared to the northern anti-slavery view. The end of the Civil war gave freedom and citizenship to African Americans in America along with suffrage.…

    • 1260 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays