History of African Americans - Research Paper Example

? African Americans Affiliation with more information about affiliation, research grants, conflict ofinterest and how to contact African Americans Introduction: Though African Americans constitute a major portion of today’s US population, their saga is replete with hardship and suffering in the initial stages. Not only were they looked down upon as humans of lower status, but they were also subjected to humiliation by those from other cultural groups. They have further been forced to work as slaves. Deprived of all nights, they were not treated as humans and they have lived toiling for years together without grudge or any chances of expressing their grievances. However, through their perseverance, this community has overcome their difficulties and the development of African Americans was unprecedented. This paper will discuss how African Americans have evolved as a strong presence within the American society from the status as slaves and what role they played within the American society and the laws that were enacted to give them their voice. The six major events of the history of African Americans are Harlem Renaissance, Black Power Movement, Thirteenth Amendment, Reconstruction, Great Migration and The Civil Rights Movement. Harlem Renaissance: Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and literary flowering that promoted a new black cultural individuality from the 1920s to the 1940s. Certainly, African American culture had again been revived in Harlem Renaissance, which was considered as a cultural movement. During that period, it was also known as the "New Negro Movement”. Although it was centered in neighborhood of Harlem area of New York City, lots of black writers from African and Caribbean city states who were residing in Paris were also affected by the Harlem Renaissance. The first phase of the Harlem Renaissance began in the late 1910s. In 1917, there was a premiere of many plays in a Negro theatre. These plays featured African-American artists, conveying complex human emotions and desires. They rejected typecasting of the blackface and traditions. During the same year James Weldon Johnson called the openings of these plays as an epoch making event in the whole history of the Negros in the Theaters in America. “These black intellectuals took inspiration from their African heritage and, through their works of creativity, provided racial uplift for their own communities” (4.4: The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1963), n.d.). As the World War I drew to an end, the tale of James Weldon and the poems of Claude McKay were unfolding the reality of African-American existence in America to the people, especially the blacks. The Harlem Renaissance further developed out of various changes taking place within in the African-American community after the abolition of slave system. Similarly industrialization was drawing more people to cities from country areas and this trend gave birth to a new mass culture. The factors which led to Harlem Renaissance were the specific situation in the aftermath of the First World War that had created immense job opportunities in industries and reconstruction for a large number of people and the Great Migration of the African Americans to cities in the north. The Harlem Renaissance thus brought the Black experience within the throng of American cultural history through the integration of African Americans and their culture into the mainstream American society. The heritage of the Harlem Renaissance had redefined how America and the whole world viewed the African Americans. Black Power Movement: The Black Power Movement arises from the Movement of Civil Rights that had gradually increased the momentum of the uplifting of the African Americans during the 1950s and 1960s. Even though not a proper movement, the Black Power movement became another turning point in black and white relations in the US and also in how black persons perceived themselves. This movement was hailed by many as a proactive and positive force aimed at improving the conditions of the Blacks to attain equality with Whites. However, many people opposed the movement and accused it as being a militant, sometimes aggressive faction whose main goal was to force a wall of segregation among Whites and Blacks. “The struggles were particularly intense during the first two decades of the 20th century, which some have called the lowest point for black Americans since the end of the Civil War” (2.3: Suffrage and Segregation (1900-1920), n.d.). In actual fact, the movement was a complex event that took place at a time when society and culture was being transformed throughout the United States, and its legacy reflects that complexity. The Black power movement also facilitated a number of opportunities for growth to the black community. The movement of Black Arts, seen by some as associated to the Black Power Movement further increased during 1960s and 1970s. Young black poets, visual artists and authors established their voices and spread those voices to others. Unlike previous black arts movements, for example the Harlem Renaissance, the latest movement mainly sought out black viewers. The movement was never an endeavor of premeditations and it had no middle leadership, which meant that various organizations with different plans frequently could not agree on the best rule. The movement did not do well in getting Blacks to break away from society of White and make a separate society. Nor did it facilitate the eradication of discrimination. It did, on the other hand, provide certain elements that were finally essential for Blacks and Whites to enable a fuller understanding of each other. Thirteenth Amendment: In the aftermath of the Civil War the nation extended equality to African Americans by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in the year 1865 that outlawed slavery. “In the political, social, economic and judicial history of the United States, the Thirteenth Amendment has had a minor, even an insignificant part” (Sidhu, n.d.). The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States abolished involuntary servitude and slavery, with the exception of punishment for an offense. Slavery had been protected in the original Constitution by clauses like the Three-Fifths Compromise, which meant that three-fifths of the slave people would be counted for representation in the House of Representatives of the United States. The 13th Amendment gave the Congress the authority to implement this article by legislation. The 13th Amendment has been enacted by the Supreme Court of the United States to include prevention of racial discrimination in property disposals, making and implementing contracts, as well as in private employment. Although aimed to eliminate slavery, the prohibition against involuntary servitude, except as a sentence for crime, has been observed by federal courts as valid to other conditions of enforced labor. The 13th Amendment has been designed to accomplish the guarantee of the Emancipation Proclamation of the year 1863 that eschewed slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States, or any other place subject to their control and by inference, it also recognized freedom as the fundamental right in America. Freedom in America has many meanings, but at its foundation, the definition has at all times been set against slavery, contrary to what freedom promised, which was the right to choose and act without force or restraints. Reconstruction: In so far as it relates to the United States, the expression Reconstruction Era assumes two senses: basically, it covers the entire history of the United States from 1865 to 1877 subsequent to the Civil War. In addition, it also focuses on the makeover of the United States of the South from 1863 to 1877. The process of restructuring of Reconstruction was initiated on the premise of civil rights movement, as the successful North tried to form the conditions whereby African Americans can freely and fully live and work in this nation as its free citizens. “The efforts to integrate the ex-slaves into the American economy and society, and at the same time welcome back the southern states that had seceded and fought against the Union, proved a monumental task” (1.1: The Unfinished Revolution, Reconstruction (1865-1877), n.d.). One of the significant features of Reconstruction was the dynamic participation of African Americans which included thousands of blacks who earlier lived as slaves in the economic, political and social life of the South. The period was to a great degree defined by their struggle for autonomy and equal rights before the law, both as individual citizens and also for the black population as a whole. The African American protesters earnestly opposed the policies of Reconstruction of President Andrew Johnson that barred blacks from southern politics and permitted state legislatures to pass preventive "black codes," which regulated the lives of the freed persons. Violent resistance to these biased laws, as well as rising opposition to policies of Johnson in the North, led to Republican victory in the United States congressional elections of the year 1866 and to a new segment of Reconstruction that would provide African Americans a further active role in the economic, political and social life of the South. Great Migration: Great Migration was the movement in which about 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern US moved to the Midwest, West and Northeast for most part of the twentieth century. Some historians distinguish between the first Great Migration from 1910 to 1930, accounting for 1.6 million migrants, who generally left the rural areas to migrate to Midwestern and northern industrial cities. Subsequently, after a lull through the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration occurred from 1940 to 1970, in which near about 5 million or more people moved to the western cities. “By the end of 1919, some 1 million blacks had left the South, usually traveling by train, boat or bus; a smaller number had automobiles or even horse-drawn carts” (Great Migration, 1996, para. 4). Many fresh arrivals from these migrants found jobs in factories, foundries and slaughterhouses, where working circumstances were arduous and sometimes risky. “In total, more than 600,000 African Americans left the South between 1914 and 1920” (4.4: The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1963), n.d.). Women migrants had a tougher time finding job, which entailed acute rivalry for domestic work positions. Because of housing tensions, a lot of blacks ended up making their own cities in big cities, contributing to the development of a new urban culture of African-American. The Great Migration also started a new period of increasing political activism between African Americans. Black migration slowed significantly around the 1920s, when the nation sank into the Great Depression, other than picked up again with the arrival of Second World War. Around the year 1960, while the Great Migration came to a conclusion, its demographic effect was unmistakable and recognizable throughout the United States. Civil Rights Movement: The Civil Rights Movement of African-Americans encompasses social movements in the US, the objective of which was to end the cultural separation and bias against African Americans and to facilitate enforce legal voting rights to them. “The year 1954 was a memorable moment in the civil rights movement because this was the year of the Supreme Court's ruling on Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas” (4.4: The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1963), n.d.). Montgomery Bus Boycott was a major and perhaps most well-known boycott throughout the civil rights movement. as a consequence of this buses were integrated into the system and black person were permitted to drive buses. The law was that African Americans can sit in the front but when a white American came on to the bus the Black will have to move to the back side of the bus. This was a system in every black and even some whites declined to use such modes of transport. . The boycott lasted a little more than a year. Gradually, due to the monitory loss, the buses became integrated and there were black drivers to drive to black routes. The movement was definitely important to developing as a nation. Conclusion: Turning back over the past 150 years, the US has endured many significant turning points in its evolution to the present status. The nation tried to find a way to reunite a country divided on the basis of race discriminating and inequality. The country initiated its first steps toward an empire and recognized its place in the world throughout the First World War. Becoming a superpower with supreme nuclear capabilities, the US experienced grand prospect as it looked to its future, though divisive cultural struggles and distrust of the government considerably affected these dreams and hopes. Moving to the new millennium, the country became a Restless Giant, unsure of its way after the Cold War, and unpopular in its reaction to violence at home. Reference List Great Migration. (1996). History.com. Retrieved from http://www.history.com/topics/great-migration Sidhu, D. S. (n.d.). The Unconstitutionality of Urban Poverty – III. The Thirteenth Amendment. Race, Racism and the Law. Retrieved from http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1656:unconstitutionalityurbanpoverty&catid=56&Itemid=179&showall=&limitstart=2 1.1: The Unfinished Revolution, Reconstruction (1865-1877). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUHIS204.11.2/sections/sec1.1 2.3: Suffrage and Segregation (1900-1920). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUHIS204.11.2/sections/sec2.3 4.4: The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1963). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUHIS204.11.2/sections/sec4.4 4.4: The Civil Rights Movement (1954-1963). (n.d.). Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUHIS204.11.2 Read More