How Have African-Americans Worked to End Segregation, Discrimination to Attain Equality - Essay Example

? How have African-Americans worked to end segregation, discrimination, and isolation to attain equality and civil rights? [Date] The United States was never a fully recognized isolationist state like medieval Japan, or modern day China and North Korea. Still a lot of factions believe that America in the 1920s and 1930s is truly characterized as having been an isolationist in the realm of security policy. The fact is, USA had an isolationist economic inclination, but it can never be labeled or certified as a fully fledged isolationist. American diplomacy in the 1920s may be termed as subtle and a bit passive, but it was equally ambitious and effective in reality. American strategy in the years leading up to the annihilation of Pearl Harbor was in fact quite reactive to events which were happening on the European continent. In short, American isolationism was somewhat of a myth, though it remains a fact that American foreign policy during the 1920s and 1930s was hugely different from the aggressive US foreign policy what the contemporary global order witnesses (Braumoeller, p.1). The changes have occurred eventually and over time the role of African Americans in ending the segregation, discrimination and hence the isolation in order to reach the goals of civil rights and equality have been significant. The reality of American isolationism The actual notion of ‘American isolationism’ developed because the US authorities concentrated on building cottage industries to strengthen their domestic economic infrastructure. This act sent a global message that the US authorities were trying to create a neo-socialist order. The reality was far from this. Cottage industry grew around the topic of American isolationism in the interwar era – so much so to facilitate that “isolationism” had become the average categorization of America’s foreign policy amid the two World Wars. It is frequently said that American isolationist emotion was accountable for realization in foreign affairs starting from the rebuff of American membership in the League of Nations all the way through the turbulent 1920s and 1930s and precisely up to the American failure to take action against Nazi belligerence. Only the brutal Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, people in general is told, was sufficient enough to arouse the Americans from their insular inactivity. Such assertions, both in textbooks and in the articles of some of the finest scholars, can be multiplied for an indefinite period (Braumoeller, pp.2-3). African Americans and the tale of struggle African Americans were the indomitable human beings who were brutally treaded by the whites into the American territory in 1619. Thus began their apathetic journey of struggle against intolerance, violence, and racial discrimination. The tradition of importing slaves came to halt in 1808. But that did not change the dire circumstances of the African people residing in nation that looked upon them as beasts embraced in a black nutcase. In 1857, the US Supreme Court decided to bar African slaves from entering or bringing a case into the court premises. The devastating situation of the African Americans took a turn with the introduction of the US Civil War which started in 1861. Abraham Lincoln took some revolutionary steps as the newly elected president of the United States. For most of the blacks, liberation and the conclusion of the Civil War meant a revitalization of hope. A hope filled with economic prospect, social mobility, and political potential. Great white centric institutions like Tuskegee, Hampton, and Howard University were at the midpoint of a debate over what kind of training, education, and preparation African Americans required for paving their way into the world. Booker T. Washington became the orator on behalf of those who believed that industrial education skills training and vocational education were the greatest means for blacks to achieve economic progress and equality. Each and every women student at Tuskegee, for an instance, was trained in domestic skills like cooking, nursing, housekeeping, and laundering (Anacotsia, 1999). Everlasting novels such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin were also published during this time. Things changed further with the introduction of the historic US civil rights movement. The historic and time changing Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a long and nonviolent struggle to materialize full civil rights and equality under the law to each and every American, be it black or white. This egalitarian movement had an everlasting impact on United States social stratum, in its tactics, the greater social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of inhuman gestures and racism. The culmination of the African American resistance Following the conclusion of the path breaking Civil War, instead of formulating laws that sheltered the human rights of the recently untied slaves, the southern legislatures prepared a cluster of laws called the Black Codes that destabilized the rights of blacks and coerced them under the tyrannical authority of whites. The writer denotes: “This display of white dominance made it clear that the fight for black rights would be a long one, as the southern states had no intention of allowing the African Americans o mingle into their society. The Black Codes allowed for the arrest of blacks who were unemployed, but they also made it difficult for blacks to find employment, requiring licenses for skilled work and setting numbers on the amount of hours a person needed to work to be considered ‘employed’.” (Crow, 2008, p.1) The Fourteenth Amendment was precisely and virtually the only part of legislation that assisted in raising the rank of African Americans after the Civil War. It was planned to offer the recently freed slaves with equivalent rights and liberties (Crow, 2008, p.2). The fourteenth amendment act slowly but surely eased things between the whites and blacks. Nevertheless equality and fraternity came to forefront much later (Crow, 2008, p.3). The government understood the need of the times and started playing a major role in easing out the tensions. Conclusion It was a fact that the Civil War, the civil rights movement and the internal turbulence led the US administration to adopt a reserved policy. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points not only lead to breakage of the US reservations, but also helped to lay the foundation stones for the formation of The League of Nations (Streissguth and Friedenthal, 2010, p.44). The foreign policy of the US can be explained as a policy of reservation. The US entered the First World War in its last year and reaped the benefits. Nevertheless it kept its reservation (Vanaik, 2007, p.101). The black population benefited from this stance as they could strengthen their indigenous industries inside a closed economy without the threat of competitors. All these historic events led to the gradual transformation in the relations between the two races. References 1) Braumoeller, B, F, The Myth of American Isolationism, Harvard, retrieved on September 3, 2011 from: http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/579__MythOfUSIsol.pdf 2) Crow, J, (2008), Post Civil War History: African Americans After Reconstruction, Associated, retrieved on September 3, 2011, from: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/903881/postcivil_war_history_african_americans.html?cat=37 3) Streissguth, T, and Friedenthal, L, (2010), Isolationism, New York, InfoBase Publishing. 4) Still cooking by the fireside (1999), Anacostia home, retrieved on September 3, 2011, from: http://anacostia.si.edu/exhibits/online_exhibitions/food/index.htm 5) Vanaik, A, (2007), Selling US wars, New York, interlink books. Read More