A Look at African Americans’ Hardships
Reconstruction, one of the most controversial and tempestuous eras of American history, witnessed how attempts to integrate into American society were made to and by African Americans. However, the issues central to it—the rights blacks deserved, and the possibility of economic and social justice—are still unsettled. The fictional play, The Piano Lesson, written by August Wilson was set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression. The book focuses on different opinions within the Charles family about whether they should sell the piano that represented their family heritage to buy land. The Piano Lesson depicts limited economic and social gains by some African Americans from 1877 through the 1930s; however, the play illustrates that most African Americans struggled in all aspects of life due to the racism and unfair treatment of the white race.
African Americans failed to make any major economic progress due to the sharecropping contract and Jim Crow laws that were set only with white people’s concern, all the way until the 1930s, when they were finally allowed to be landowners themselves. In 1882, the white landowners came up with the one-sided sharecropping contract, stating “work of every description, particularly the work on …show more content…
Even though African Americans were able to buy land and move north to live in the same community as white people, the sharecropping contract and Jim Crow laws both revealed a lack of economic opportunities and progress. At the same time, the case of Plessy v. Ferguson and the fact they did not want their children to suffer exposed the social disadvantages with which they were forced to endure. Slavery was abolished, but African Americans still did not get the rights they deserved, which begs the question, “When will ultimate equality ever be achieved in this color based
Reconstruction, one of the most controversial and tempestuous eras of American history, witnessed how attempts to integrate into American society were made to and by African Americans. However, the issues central to it—the rights blacks deserved, and the possibility of economic and social justice—are still unsettled. The fictional play, The Piano Lesson, written by August Wilson was set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression. The book focuses on different opinions within the Charles family about whether they should sell the piano that represented their family heritage to buy land. The Piano Lesson depicts limited economic and social gains by some African Americans from 1877 through the 1930s; however, the play illustrates that most African Americans struggled in all aspects of life due to the racism and unfair treatment of the white race.
African Americans failed to make any major economic progress due to the sharecropping contract and Jim Crow laws that were set only with white people’s concern, all the way until the 1930s, when they were finally allowed to be landowners themselves. In 1882, the white landowners came up with the one-sided sharecropping contract, stating “work of every description, particularly the work on …show more content…
Even though African Americans were able to buy land and move north to live in the same community as white people, the sharecropping contract and Jim Crow laws both revealed a lack of economic opportunities and progress. At the same time, the case of Plessy v. Ferguson and the fact they did not want their children to suffer exposed the social disadvantages with which they were forced to endure. Slavery was abolished, but African Americans still did not get the rights they deserved, which begs the question, “When will ultimate equality ever be achieved in this color based