Ethnic Studies African Americans

UNIT 4: AFRICAN AMERICANS THE PAST ● As we know, for the majority of American history, African Americans were subjected to slavery up until 1865 ● Slavery in America rested on 5 major points: 1. slavery was for life 2. the status was inherited 3. slaves were equivalent to property 4. slavery were not equal to men, therefore they had no rights 5. punishment was used to keep them from rebelling against masters ● Consider the statement All men are equal. Were all men truly equal? No. ○ That's why slaves were not considered men ■ If they were, the country would have had to face the fact that despite their equality statement, they never followed through ● Slaves also had “rules” they had to follow such as: 1. marriage between slaves was not recognized 2. slaves could not make a will nor inherit anything 3. no one (even whites) were allowed to teach a slave to read or write 4. slaves could not leave their plantation without a note 5. all slaves had to obey the established curfews that were put in place ○ There were more rules they had to follow of coure, this is just an example of the few they had to obey ○ Violation of the rules were dealt in a multitude of ways. Some ways include: ■ mutilation ■ branding ■ whipped ● Those who advocated for the abolition of slaveyr were known as, abolitionists ○ This included many whites and free blacks ■ But, many abolitionists who supported the end of slavery did not support racial equality, such as Abraham Lincoln ■ Freed slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Sourjouner Truth became very prominnet figures in the fight against slavery ■ Hariett Tubman, as well as other Blacks and sympathetic Whites, organized the Underground Railroad which would help guide many slaves to their freedom ■ Slaves also revolted against servitude ● Between 40,000 and 100,000 escaped from the South and slavery ■ Some slaves who didn’t revolt with violence (fear of punishment), offerened a passive form of resistance ● they pretended to be clumsy, pretended not to hear or understand, and ridiculed their masters with a form of humor whites did not understand ● January 1, 1863 -- President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation ○ This document freed slaves only in the Confederacy ■ 6 months later, after the surrender of the Confederate states, abolition became law because of the 13th amendment ● In modern times, there is a film called the 13 which outlines the effect of the 13th amendment and the mass incarceration of African Americans at a higher level than other races (highly recommend you watch !!) ● The Reconstruction period following the Civil War (between 1867-1877) was an attempt to rebuild a broken America after a bloody time ○ Racial relations were at a point never seen before ■ Interracial couples, blacks went to public schools with whites, etc. ● to learn more about interracial couples and the aura around that, learn about a court case named Loving v. the State of Virginia (there’s a movie on this !!) ○ Southern states, however, enacted a series of laws that would prevent former slaves and their descendants from achieving a racial equality ■ These laws, commonly known as Jim Crow Laws (named after a tune), kept african americans at an inferior position ● In 1896, the US Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that state laws requiring “separate but equal” accommodations for Blacks were reasonable ○ These were eventually overturned, but there is still a lingering sense of anger that this had to happen in the first place VOTING RIGHTS ● In 1898, the Supreme Court decided in William v. Mississippi that using poll taxes, literacy tests and residential requirements were considered constitutional ○ These discouraged many African Americans from voting ■ In Louisiana of that year, 130,000 blacks were registered to vote ● 8 years later, the number dropped to 1300 ● White supremacists included one more obstacle: the White primary ○ This forbade Blacks from voting in the election primaries ■ At the time, the primaries were more significant than the general election because of the one-party system THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT ● This movement refers to the struggle for freedom and racial equality for African Americans ● This movement gained momentum when the SCOTUS decision in 1954 desegregated the public schools ● Schools were segregated ○ de jure segregation: segregation that is a result from children being assigned to schools in order to maintain racially separate schools ○ Blacks were assigned to poorer rooms that were well maintained ■ poorly ventilated rooms ■ overcrowded rooms ■ unqualified teachers ○ Less money was spent on Black schools than white schools ■ All black schools were not equal to all white schools ● Brown v. Board of Education ○ 7 year old Linda Brown was not allowed to enroll in a school that was four blocks away from her home in Kansas ○ The denial of allowing her to enroll led to the NAACP (national association for the advancement of colored people) Legal Defense and Educational Fund to bring out a suit on behalf of Bron and 12 other Black Children ■ They NAACP argued that the 14th amendment was meant to rule out segregation in schools ● Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the unanimous decision “in the field of public education, ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” ○ Resistance to the court ordered desegregation was happening all over the south ■ Some called for the impeachment of the SCOTUS justices ■ Cities closed schools rather than complying with the order ■ The governor of Arkansas used the state’s National Guard to black Black students from entering a previously all-White high school in Little Rock ● James Meredith was the first African American accepted to the University of Mississippi in 1962 ● December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man ○ Her defiance led to the establishment of the Montgomery Improvement Association headed by 26 year old Martin Luther King Jr ■ MLK Jr was a Baptist minister with a PHD from Boston University ○ This bus boycott was the first of many situations where Blacks used nonviolent direct action to obtain equal rights ■ The bus boycott eventually led to the demand of desegregated seating ● Civil disobedience is based off the belief that people have the right to disobey the law under certain circumstances ○ Not a new concept-- blacks have used it before, and gandhi had used it in India ● MLK Jr stated that some man-made laws should be disobeyed, simply because they were not right and didn’t align with God’s higher moral code ○ In disobeying unjust laws, he came up with this strategy: ■ actively but nonviolent resisting evil ■ not seeking to defeat or humiliate opponents but to win their friendship and understanding ■ attacking the forces of evil rather than the people who happen to be doing the evil ■ being willing to accept suffering without retaliating ■ refusing to hate the opponent ■ acting conviction and believing that the universe is on the side of justice ○ King made it clear that a passive acceptance of injustice was intolerable ○ He hoped by emphasizing peace, southern Blacks would display their hostility to racism in a way that would undercut violent reaction by Whites ● On August 28, 1963 the famous March of Washington for Jobs and Freedom happened ○ MLK Jr delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech in front of a large crowd ○ More than 200,000 people participated in the march ○ This was a high point for the Civil Rights Movement ○ A public poll that occurred noted that a majority of Whites, 63%, were opposed to the rally ● 18 days later, a bomb exploded in a black church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four little girls and injures 20 ● On July 2, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which gave blacks “the illusion of equality” AFRICAN AMERICANS TODAY ● Long after the Civil Rights Movement happened, education still remains a controversial issue in modern times ○ Racial and ethnic groups see the value of education, making them trying to maximize the amount of education their children receive ● Blacks, as a group, have always gotten less education than whites ○ Although programs that are aimed at poorer children, such as Head Start, white children are still more likely to have a formal pre-kindergarten education than blacks ○ Black children generally drop out of school more often than whites, which leads to a major racial gap in college graduates ● Proposals to improve multiple aspects of the education problem typically translates to a need for more funding ○ as usual, there are disagreements over what would be the best way to positively change the educational system ■ some schools have developed programs highlighting important parts of African American history, trying to engage their Black students ● but, sometimes these programs are even viewed as “racist towards white” (although it’s virtually impossible to be racist to whites because reverse racism does not exist.) ● Tracking in schools decreases White-Black classroom interaction in some states ○ tracking is a method used in some schools that places students in classes based off of test scores and other criteria ■ African Americans are disproportionately assigned to general classes ● Studies also show that African Americans are more likely to be classified as “disturbed, aggressive, or learning disabled” ● There has also been discrimination in the housing ○ a key factor in the racial wealth gap is the failure of African Americans ability to accumulate wealth through home owning ○ there are a multitude of factors that contribute to residential discrimination such as: ■ private prejudice and discrimination-- people refusing to sell their house because the buyer is the “wrong” race, religion, ethnicity etc. ■ prejudicial policies in companies of real estate that steer people to the “correct” neighborhoods ■ governmental policies that do not actively enforce anti-bias legislation