Jim Crow Challenges

Improved Essays
After the Reconstruction, African Americans faced many challenges during the years following. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery, and the 14th amendment defined what an American is. Both had little to no effect on Jim Crow. In the south segregation was much worse, and that’s where most African Americans lived during this time. Jim Crows laws kept blacks from voting and holding any positions in office. Jim Crow also set blacks up to endure harsh segregation regulations. Crossing the color lines also caused white supremacist under Jim Crow to use very violent techniques they considered justice like shooting and lynching blacks in the south. Separate but equal ruled that there was no discrimination against blacks in segregation, even though …show more content…
Whites maintained their superiority by making sure they had the better education and setting blacks up for failure in the long run. Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave, wanted African Americans to stop searching for political and social equality and focus their energy on learning new trades and skills to be able to support themselves. Washington believed that by educating themselves and becoming better in new trades and skills could potentially lead African Americans in the direction of earning white people’s respect, and the gain social acceptance. William Trotter didn’t have the same views as Washington. As a Harvard graduate from Cleveland, Trotter grew very impatient with Washington and accused Washington of self-seeking and being a coward. Trotter judged Washington’s relationship with President Roosevelt. The Boston riot that Washington spoke against and in outrage ended with Trotter being arrested for 30 days for disturbing the peace. Trotter was a radical and had radical views much different from Washington, but he was very vocal during this time about the struggle of civil rights. Protests against Washington were …show more content…
Many of the big business owner were born into wealth making many Americans question what it takes to actually support themselves and their families. Many Americans began to feel that they couldn’t work themselves into the middle class if they wanted to. It challenged the American work ethic, because working hard and being proud and proactive about their profession wouldn’t technically get them where they wanted to be. Those born into wealth already had to means to take over big business and control the economy. Industrialists used Darwinism to justify their positions in life and Darwinism contributed to the divide of the new consumer culture, and the traditional culture from more rural areas. Darwinism promoted the expansion of social sciences and encouraged anthropologists to begin examining the differences in other cultures in many news ways. The social gospel was formed to redeem American cities, and worked to put an end to social and economic injustice. The outrage from reformers triggered them to begin pursuing social justice. In the south, industrialization happened quickly, but not like the north. In the south many labor workers had to endure harsh working conditions and long hours for very little pay. Many of the industries offered little to no jobs to African Americans. Sharecropping became important in the new south. The south’s agriculture was suffering and they saw an opportunity to

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Homestead lockout and strike of 1892 had a big impact on the labor movement of the late 19th century. The misapplication of Darwinian thought is used to explain the misuse of free market techniques. Based on the lecture given in class, Social Darwinism was developed by British philosopher Herbert Spencer who applied Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution to society. It is described as a process that came as a result of competition where the strong succeeded and the weak died. Social Darwinism insisted that neither government nor human intervention should be used in order to help the poor.…

    • 798 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the years that followed the Civil War, many southerners had a hard time adjusting to the new laws that were being forced upon them. So, during 1865-1866 the Southern “Black Codes” were made. These newly passed southern laws limited the freedom of the former slaves. Each law mirrored colonial times, the laws had severe restrictions that were only there for former slaves and emancipated blacks. The “Black Codes” excluded colored children from attending public schools in the south, they also made it so neither group could vote, serve on juries, travel freely or work in occupations of their choice, and even their marriages were outside the law.…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Naturally the need for more workers meant more jobs and the news of this spread throughout the world. Looking upon the United States step towards modernization the only two social classes that truly benefited from it were the upper and middle classes. The upper class were generally the owners of these new businesses while the middle class found jobs working for these large corporations. Because of this it was easy to see that when the immigrants arrived they were put into the lower working class. Much of the people in this class were non-whites therefore many faced racial discrimination.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There were several hopeful periods during Reconstruction when progress was made for freed African Americans. The first was the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments guaranteeing African Americans certain civil liberties. Also, several African Americans were elected to Congress and numerous others served in state and local governments. However, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups, in lieu with the Black Codes, began to intimidate freed slaves and push back their civil liberties. Also, in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Supreme Court helped severely limit the rights of African Americans.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Too Hard to Believe: The New Jim Crow:Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness The New Jim Crow would be the other word that describes the part of time where many African American people did not have their rights and were living a life that made them feel like they are nothing. The New Jim Crow has been known between everyone because of its importance to our lives. Michelle Alexander who is an associate professor of law at the Ohio State University, a civil right advocate and a writer, described how African American people in the age of Colorblindness lived and suffered because discrimination was widespread around that time. Alexander explains in her book how African American would always be entitled as felons for crimes that they did not do against white people who actually commit crimes but get away with it because of their skin color.…

    • 873 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow reveals how the War on drugs and the current legal system in the United States has been designed as a new caste system: mass incarceration. The current system of mass incarceration in the US mirrors earlier systems of racialized social control through racial segregation, political origin, and how race is defined in America. Mass incarceration and previous caste systems like Jim Crow have historical parallels with each other. Politically mass incarceration and jim crow were created by white elites to exploit poor and working class whites anger and racial bias for political and economic gain. Jim Crow used segregation laws were created to defect anger and opposition from white elites to african…

    • 271 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reconstruction Dbq

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Reconstruction Era was when America first let black men, and white men live together. It is also when the Federal Government decided to let the Southern States back in. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln decided to appoint military governors to re-establish the Southern states that were recaptured by the Union Army. That meant trouble. The most important thing that Lincoln made clear was that the re-admittance was that the minimum of 10 percent of the voting population in 1860, was to take an oath of allegiance to the Union.…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The reconstruction was supposed to be a time of peace, and rebuilding America after the civil war, it was for from that. It started even more racism. The black people wanted equal rights because they finally got free from slavery, and were not treated well. They got the worst of the worst. When they got food, education, housing, and basic needs, they got it, it was just the worst of it, which did not make it much better.…

    • 439 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The “New Jim Crow” subject is a very sensitive subject to me, I say this because when I arrived here, a year later I was involved in a committed relationship with a person who had been to jail because he believed he was a victim of misidentification, because he was believed to have looked like someone who sold weed on the street where he was hanging out, he was found not guilty and an apology was given out, but he was left angry for the misidentification as a result he had trust issues, anger towards the law enforcement which made it hard for us to go out , four months ago we had to end our committed relationship because I could no longer tolerate the mistrust and anger. Furthermore, I blame the system for making it easy for the law enforcement…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    New political forces in the South gave way for new changes. During reconstruction, African Americans made huge political gains. They voted in large numbers and were also elected to political office. African Americans were elected as sheriffs, mayors, legislators, Congressmen, and Senators. Even thought their participation was significant, it was exaggerated by white southerners angry at the Black Republicans governments.…

    • 1656 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Jim Crow This was a name that was given to a racial caste system which operated predominantly in southern and Border States between the year 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was a perfect way of living which was devoted to affirming and upholding the superiority of whites over blacks. Jim Crow was demonstrating legitimization of anti-black racism and under him the blacks had been downgraded into the state of second class citizens. (Union, 2014) How Jim Crow was implemented Taking away the vote- black males were deprived of the right to vote through lawful withdrawal of their civil rights.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The jail was created in order to keep peace and maintain chaos to one dominant space. The jail is an entrance point to the criminal justice system. In this system, people are arrested and booked for performing crimes, this includes basic misdemeanors. A jail is supposed to hold persons of a dangerous behavior, such as rapists and predators, but this isn’t generally the case. A great majority of persons confined in this type of space belong to a different social category.…

    • 915 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The New Jim Crow

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages

    During 1986 Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which created lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug dealing and small possession of crack cocaine. The first sentence for a drug offense is five to ten years. The second offense equates to ten to fifteen years in prison. After that, if a person is caught dealing or with drugs, a life imprisonment is mandatory for the individual. Some may argue the need for the three strike system is invalid because individuals should not be committing the crime in the first place.…

    • 1121 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Longing hearts could only stand so much longing.” Margaret Mitchell In a period of time after the tragic Civil War, America entered a time of rebuilding, known as the Reconstruction. During this time, the northerners had created a movement to create equal rights for former slaves, fighting to get them all the rights that white Americans had. For a while, it seemed as if things were going in favor of Reconstruction; Three amendments were made giving black Americans more rights, a Military Reconstruction Act was founded, black churches and schools were built, and African Americans were even elected to congress.…

    • 1055 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Racism, which is bad enough, led to things much worse for African Americans. “Along with restrictions on voting rights and laws to segregate society, white violence against African Americans increased. Many African Americans were lynched because they were suspected of committing crimes,” (Appleby et all, 520). Even if African Americans were innocent, they were killed because many were not allowed to go on trial.…

    • 1142 Words
    • 5 Pages
    • 5 Works Cited
    Superior Essays