How Have African-Americans Worked to End Segregation and Discrimination - Essay Example

How have African-Americans Worked to End Segregation, Discrimination, and Isolation to Attain Equality and Civil Rights? Student’s Name: Course: Tutor’s Name: Date: Introduction It is often said that nothing good is free. While the truth in such a statement is relative to one’s condition or situation, it could hold true to Americans of African ancestry who had to struggle for the relative equality and civil rights that they enjoy today. The history of African-Americans and their struggle to be recognized and treated as equal beings would be incomplete without mentioning that their extraction in North America can be traced to the human trade whose culmination was slavery, which was predominant in both the 17th and 18th century America. Even after slavery was abolished, blacks continued facing a great deal of discrimination and segregation. Notably, African-Americans responded in a combination of ways, which included moving away from the white communities and establishing all-black communities; establishing civil rights organizations to represent them; and petitioning the American government in courts of law where they felt that their civil rights, freedom and equality was being trampled. Overall, this essay holds the premise that the African-Americans used a combination of approaches in a bid to end the segregation, discrimination and isolation that they faced in the predominantly white North America. But whether they have managed to attain equality and the civil rights that their forefathers had envisaged and worked hard for is still a debatable issue. Post Civil war America, and African-Americans quest for equality and civil rights Ever since the thirteenth amendment was ratified in the American Constitution, slavery became an illegal activity in the country. Consequently, the freed slaves felt the need to live in the same manner as their former masters. Hence, they yearned for a chance to acquire education, own property, get jobs, and live normal lives just like the white Americans. Yet, in a society that was used to the perception that black-Americans were lesser people, with relatively lesser intelligence, and even lesser capacity to lead as dignified humans, the ensuing cultural change would face resistance both from the whites, and the blacks who had bought into the perception that their capacities, both physically, intellectually and even emotionally would not equal the whites. Despite the resistance, some African-Americans championed the civil rights and equality causes with much vigor. The causes were deeply entrenched in the American Constitution, through the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, which abolished slavery, gave citizenry to black men, and gave them the right to vote respectively. The passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1875 was also a great boost to the African-Americans’ cause, since the Act gave all Americans irrespective of their racial associations, the right to equal accommodation and access to facilities such as public transport, theaters, and restaurants among others. The Act was however short-lived as the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional eight years later in 1883 (Smith, 2010). The Act was reintroduced and passed in Congress decades later in 1964 (Civilrights.org, 2012). The resistance that African Americans faced in their attempt to become part of the mainstream society in America, while accessing the same rights and privileges as their white counterparts made their resolve even stronger. In 1881 for example, Booker T. Washington started working at building the Tuskegee Institute, which was meant to offer agricultural and industrial training to the blacks. According to CliffsNotes.com (2012), Washington’s ideas about ending segregation, discrimination and isolation were founded on his conviction that self-improvement and empowerment among blacks would earn them respect and recognition from the white communities. As such, Washington argued that they would earn the social equality and the civil rights they sought rather than demand for them. Washington’s philosophy was controversial, and was thoroughly critiqued by another champion of the African-American cause, W.E.B. Dubois. According to Dubois, African-Americans had to enjoy the rights and privileges that the white people enjoyed, because to him, all humanity was the same regardless of their racial affiliations (Seitles, 1996). Dubois further asserted that an integrationist ideology was essential if at all the African Americans were to participate in the social, economic and political social order that was previously a preserve of the white (Seitles, 1996). According to Dubois, integration of the black people into such a social order was the only way that the society at large could correct the historical discrimination and consequent injustices against black people (Seitles, 1996). Dubois’ standpoint was later shared by other civil rights activists such as Paul Robeson (1898-1976) and Martin Luther King Junior (1929-1968), who were especially vocal in the 19th century. In a true representation of his belief that agitations and petitions would eventually place African-Americans at par with their white Americans counterparts, Dubois initiated what Smith (1996, p. 3) calls the “modern civil rights movement” by issuing the Niagara manifesto. The rights movement culminated in the passage and enactment of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which illegalized segregation, discrimination or isolation of any American in house ownership based on race. In other words, Dubois, Robeson and Martin Luther King, Jr. were advocates of civil rights, who believed that advocacy and agitation would sensitize the black people about their rights, while awakening the whites and the political leaders about the need and importance of treating blacks as equals. Notably, Paul Robeson went step further to using his acting and musical skills to advocate for the civil rights and equality of the ‘negroes’. Spartacus Educational (n.d) for example documents how Robeson rebuked President Harry Truman for his apparent inaction against the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious group of white men who executed mob assaults and lynch murders against the black people. In 1946, he led a delegation of petitioners who wanted President Truman to sponsor the anti-lynching legislation that would put a stop to the Ku Klux Klan (Foner, 1978). Robeson used his popularity in the films to portray the black people as just as deserving as their white counterparts (Foner, 1978). Additionally, he used his popularity to lobby for their rights, freedoms and equality to an extent that he refused to perform for any segregated audiences or films that portrayed Americans of African descent in a bad light. As a musician, Robeson composed songs, which had underlying philosophical values and beliefs echoed in the civil rights movement (Spartacus Educational, n.d). Such songs are confirmed in literature by Leichtman (2010), who argues that they were the sound and reflection of protest against the historical and prevailing injustices that the song-writers and composers were experiencing at the time. Notably, music had a special place in the African-American culture, and as Leichtman (2010) observes, its importance in the fight for justice, recognition, civil rights and liberties cannot be ignored. On his part, Martin Luther King, Jr. is arguably the most popular of all civil right activists in the African-American cause. He is closely associated with the Montgomery bus boycott, which led to the boycott of public transport busses in 1955, which according to Griffin and Hargis (2008, p. 136), “redefined the meaning of race and rights”. The boycott bore fruits since racial segregation in busses was lifted and integration was adopted in Montgomery (Moulton et al., n.d). The Montgomery bus boycott is incomplete without mentioning Rosa Parks, a woman whose refusal to give up her seat for a white man in the bus as was required started off the protest that led to the boycott. Parks was a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Moulton et al., n.d). In addition to the Montgomery bus boycott, King also organized a sit-in by students in North Carolina to protest the non-black policy by Woolworths. He is also on record for encouraging blacks to register as voters despite the challenges they faced while doing so. He repeatedly told the black people that the ‘power of the vote’ would eventually liberate them from their oppressors (Moulton et al., n.d). Individual contributors to the civil rights movement aside, African-Americans also realized that there was power in numbers. Hence, they formed civil rights movements such as NAACP, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), and the National Negro Congress (NNC) among others. At one time in history (1940s to 1950s), the NAACP, CRC and NNC differently petitioned the United Nations about the civil rights situation among African-Americans (Newman, 2004). Notably, the organizations’ attempts to file their grievances before the UN failed. However, they had succeeded in making their concerns known to the larger world. The NAACP was the largest and the most vocal of the civil rights movements, which according to Newman (2004, p. 248), “crafted onto its civil rights agenda a demand for human rights, encompassing economic and social rights, which it took before the UN” . Unfortunately, the UN’s powers over America’s domestic affairs was limited and the therefore it (UN) could not intervene in the struggle for equality and civil rights among African-Americans (Anderson, 2003). Equal access to resources was a major concern to civil right activists among the black communities. Among such activists was Dubois, who was concerned that denying African-Americans equal access to education disadvantaged them to access equal economic, social and political opportunities as their white counterparts (Newman, 2004). Dubois’ position received support in law in Brown v. Board of education of Topeka, when it was ruled that “segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal education opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal” (Cornell University Law School, n.d., n.pg.). Brown v. Board was significant in that it upset the ‘separate-but-equal’ precedence that had been set in Plessy v. Fergusson. The latter was an 1896 decision by the US Supreme Court that had enabled segregation laws based on race to be set (Brown, 2004). African-Americans clearly understood that the legal channels were able to bring equality and justice to them through rulings. One of other notable people who went to court with anti-segregation petitions include Thomas Hocutt, who in 1933 went to court to seek admission to colleges reserved for whites at the time (Brown, 2004). Overall, African-Americans worked to end segregation, discrimination, and isolation to attain equality and civil rights in different ways, which included mobilization of support from white sympathizers, protesting on the streets, filing petitions in courts, and empowering their fellow black people to stand up for their rights among other methods. As Anderson (2003) observes, the African-Americans had realized that a better life for them and other generations after them would only be guaranteed if they upset the undermined socio-cultural and political status that they had been subjected to following years of slavery and undermining perceptions. According to Anderson (2003), the African-Americans however failed to include economic issues in their struggle for equality and civil rights. Newman (2004) however refutes the claim by Anderson by noting that the 1963 Birmingham campaign was economic-oriented since it called for fair employment in government and private enterprises. Another notable economic-related activity undertaken by the civil rights movement was the 1963 march for jobs and freedom that occurred in Washington. During the march, protesters demanded for “a huge federal public works program, elimination of employment discrimination, and broadening of workers’ protection” (Newman, 2004, p. 253). Conclusion In conclusion, it is worth noting that African-Americans used different approaches to advance their calls for equality and civil rights. Most of the approaches were reactive to the treatment that the blacks received from the whites politically, socially and economically, but were also proactive since their leaders championed an equal society for all regardless of race. From Booker T Washington’s ideas of empowering blacks through technical and agricultural training, to Dubois ideas of equality among all, to even Martin Luther King Junior’s nonviolent civil disobedience ideas, it is clear that African-Americans knew just the kind of socio-political and economic environment they wanted to live in. Whether the civil rights and equality causes that the African-Americans have worked for over the years since the end of slavery have been attained is an answer whose scope is beyond this paper. Of notable importance is that African-Americans fought for what they believed was right, and their subsequent generations are living, or will live in a more just and equal society. References Anderson, C. (2003). Eyes off the prize: The United Nations and the African American struggle for human rights, 1944-1955. NY: Cambridge University press. Brown, F.B. (2004). African American Civil rights in North Carolina. Tar Heel Junior Historian, 44(1):1-6. Civilrights.org. (2012). Justice on trial: Racial disparities in the American criminal justice system. Justice on Trial. Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://www.civilrights.org/publications/justice-on-trial/. CliffsNotes.com (n.d.). African-Americans after reconstruction. Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/AfricanAmericans-after-Reconstruction.topicArticleId-25238,articleId-25185.html Cornell University Law School. (n.d). Brown v. board of education of Topeka (no.1). Legal Information Institute. Retrieved February 1, 2012 from: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0347_0483_ZS.html Foner, P.S. (ed), (1978). Paul Robeson speaks: writing, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974. 2nd edition, Illustrated. Larchmont: Brunner/Mazzel publishers. Griffin, L.J. & Hargis, P. G. (2008). Still distinctive after all these years- trends in racial attitudes in and out of the South. Southern Cultures, 14(3):117-141. doi:10.1353/scu.0.0020. Leichtman, E.C. (2010). The different sounds of American protest: from freedom songs to punk rock. In M. Deflem (Ed.), Popular Culture, Crime and Social Control (Sociology of Crime Law and Deviance, Volume 14) (pp. 173-191). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Moulton, A., Phillips, N., Styza, S., & Gonzales, S. (n.d.). Montgomery bus boycott. Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/agentsheets/New-Vista/bus-boycott/ Newman, M. (2004). Civil rights and human rights. Reviews in American History, 32(2):247-254. doi:10.1353/rah.2004.0034. Seitles, M. (1996). The perpetuation of residential racial segregation in America: historical discrimination, modern forms of exclusion, and inclusionary remedies. Journal of Land Use and Environmental Law, 141(Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/landuse/vol141/seit.htm Smith, R.C. (1996). We have no leaders- African Americans in the post-civil rights era. Albany: State University of New York Press. Smith, V. C. (2010). American anti-slavery and civil rights timeline. Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://www.ushistory.org/more/timeline.htm Spartacus Educational (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2012 from: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USArobeson.htm Read More