African American Lives

This speech was spoken during a time of segregation and discrimination between White’s and African Americans within the United States. Despite the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, White’s still sought to disenfranchise African Americans due to the color of their skin and the ignorant belief that Whites were the superior race. Oppression of all forms were enacted in order to keep African Americans “in their place” and to ensure that White’s reaped all…

African Americans have always faced inequalities and injustices from the birth of America. African Americans were first segregated from whites due the creation of the slave codes, which distinguished who was white and who was black, or in other terms, who has rights and who does not. Once slavery ended it did not end segregation or even racism; the Jim Crow laws defined segregation. Black people were not allowed to go to white schools, or even sit next to a white a person on a bus. Blacks did…

used to live in a society where women were not seen in the likeness of men. Women were unable to vote, reduced to caregivers, and were not compensated to the same standards of men. We used to live in a society in which the LGBT community was frowned upon. They were unable to legally marry and were seen as mentally disabled. We used to live in a society in which races were divided because of the color of their skin. African Americans were lynched, abused, and disregarded. We used to live in a…

by hanging. African Americans were subjects of lynching for several different crimes that often times were not even committed. Southern citizens used lynching to intimidate African Americans, causing the freedoms they were allowed to not be easily exercised. Southern whites used lynching to punish African Americans for unjust crimes, scare them from using their freedoms, and to allow the whites to remain in control of the African Americans. Lynching became a popular part of American Culture in…

Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, and many more have joined a category of African American people, who have been unjustly slain. Although, their murders have been highly publicized, caused uproars and inspired movements such as #blacklivesmatter, the people in this category have received little to no justice. It appears that we are seeing more and more African American lives taken. The fact that most of these murders are at the hands of white police officers or vigilantes calls to question…

the start of the 20th century, African-Americans faced extreme hardships in the south. Life for the average African-American was an everyday struggle, as it involved many challenges even well after the ending of slavery. After the abolishment of slavery, many African-Americans remained in the South. The migration movement in was mainly to find better educational opportunities for their children and better employment opportunities for themselves. African-Americans moved out of the southern…

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…

’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives After the Civil War. This essay will compare and contrast the similarities and differences in/from the two readings. This essay will also prove how the differences and likeness between the two readings are more than superficial actions acted purely out of reaction or emotion, but more so how they relate and were executed out of a deeper self-awareness and purpose from and outsiders view of the African American woman’s perspective. The end of the…

Without blatantly stating it, society has found a way to ensure the legal separation of the African Americans from the whites. White people (mostly, of course) aren’t going to deliberately say, “We want to live in a segregated lifestyle; the whites to one side and the African Americans to the other.” They are, however, going to do anything in their power to make this happen without actually coming out and saying it because that would be rude and politically incorrect. David Roediger states that…

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…