One of the outcomes of the Civil War was the emancipation of African Americans. After the Thirteenth Amendment passed in 1869, resulting in the abolition of slavery, millions of African Americans were able to experiment freedom for the first time. As part of the Reconstruction phase after the war, several amendments and acts were passed to prevent discrimination at the new group that was incorporating to society as an “equal”. They were even granted the right to vote, given by the Fifteenth Amendment, which clearly stated that it was prohibited to deny a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen 's race, color, or previous condition of servitude. However, in reality, that equality was almost impossible to achieve. Laws like Jim
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A major punishment for African Americans, during the time this novel is set, was lynching. It was a way of reinforcing white supremacy and a way of making black people to comply with imposed “rules”. The Tuskegee records shows that, in 1892, 162 black Americans were put to death outside the bounds of the law, mainly in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky. Through 1944, Tuskegee recorded 3,417 lynchings of black people. According to the article “The Killing Season” by Philip Dray, the most repeated excuse for a lynching was a sexual assault by a black man against a white woman. However, anyone could be a victim of this atrocity, even children, as the case of an eight year old black child known as Parks who was lynched in South Carolina for nothing. Steinbeck was able to portray this fear in the novel Of Mice and Men when Curley’s wife threatens to hang Crooks from a tree, adding how easy would be to do it. The way Crooks reacts to the threat reflects the terror he felt; he “…had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego- nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and his voice was
A major punishment for African Americans, during the time this novel is set, was lynching. It was a way of reinforcing white supremacy and a way of making black people to comply with imposed “rules”. The Tuskegee records shows that, in 1892, 162 black Americans were put to death outside the bounds of the law, mainly in states like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky. Through 1944, Tuskegee recorded 3,417 lynchings of black people. According to the article “The Killing Season” by Philip Dray, the most repeated excuse for a lynching was a sexual assault by a black man against a white woman. However, anyone could be a victim of this atrocity, even children, as the case of an eight year old black child known as Parks who was lynched in South Carolina for nothing. Steinbeck was able to portray this fear in the novel Of Mice and Men when Curley’s wife threatens to hang Crooks from a tree, adding how easy would be to do it. The way Crooks reacts to the threat reflects the terror he felt; he “…had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego- nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and his voice was