The Struggles and Movement for Black America

African-Americans have suffered the greatest indignity in the history of the humankind. Millions of African-Americans were enslaved throughout the United States from the Colonial Era until the end Civil War during which they were brutalized, murdered, kidnapped, raped, and deprived of their natural rights. Meanwhile, African-Americans have fought in every single war to secure America’s

African Americans, majority of them still enslaved, continued to fight for their freedoms. Many began to petition for their unalienable rights. Northern states petitioned to have the children of slaves freed once they reached the legal age as an adult while others ran away to the North to a free state (Voices of Freedom Chapter 6 pages 14-116).

After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War, millions of African Americans won their freedom and were prepared to join society as equal citizens. While some Americans embraced the situation, others strained to spread racism throughout their community. By 1900, the South had formed a segregated society, finding ways to get past new laws and keeping old traditions that kept African Americans under a white American system.

Blacks were treated poorly throughout their years as slaves. After the Civil War, they were emancipated from slavery, and given to right to citizenship and suffrage through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. With their newfound freedom, many former black slaves joined the war efforts, and were one of the primary reasons the Union had victory over the Confederacy. However, even after all the wonderful things that they did, nothing changed about how society treated them. Evident through black codes, Jim Crow laws, and rise of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, blacks may have gotten “freedom” however they were still treated poorly, and less than human.

African Americans were set free after the Civil War. After the Civil War the freedom of African American was really vague. Although they were set free they really weren't free. White people would say

After the Civil War the freedman were not truly free. The definition of freedom is the power, or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraints. After the Civil War the slaves were considered free, but they were not treated accordingly. For the whites to still have power over the black's and to keep them in order the new laws started coming out so they don’t try and overpower the whites. In Alabama the new laws Governing the slaves, in Mississippi the Black Codes, and in various states the Jim Crow laws.

Shortly after the civil war, slaves started to prove their independence from whites while the whites tried protecting the old way of life. Blacks

This cannot be furthest from the truth, they were considered free in word, but not deed (p. 506). To this day, many African Americans along with other ethnic groups that were oppressed are still tainted by slavery and its historical trauma. With this so called reconstruction of the new America, people of African descent demanded to be treated equal. The reconstruction period was a hopeful time for women who made a mark for themselves as far as acquiring financing and political independent (Gates & Smith, 2014). Can you imagine, personal freedom after coming from an era in which you had no options? After the Civil War supposedly broke slavery’s band, African Americans felt that this new nation shall be color blind, respect, and value women and men on their character rather than the color of their

In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation freed all African Americans that lived in rebel states. For years, only the rebel states had free African Americans, however, after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment freed all slaves, no matter where they were. Of course, after years of slavery, whites were not used to having free African Americans around them, creating a hostile environment. One former slave, Houston Holloway wrote, “For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them” (African American Odyssey 1).

Following the Civil War, America was in shambles. There were many groups with strong, conflicting ideas of how things should be. However, most groups had one idea in common: reducing the rights of African Americans as much as possible. Freed slaves had very little freedom under the law, were treated like a lesser species by those around them, and faced dangerous environments everywhere they went. Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation may have legally freed slaves, but African Americans were barely more than paid slaves.

The blacks couldn't really do anything when they became free because a lot of blacks were slaves and didn't have jobs and businesses therefore the supply of food medicine and products we need to be healthy to help us live longer they didn't have because they were slaves and didn't make money to buy it and they couldn't go to a store because most stores were only for whites and those were the stores that had the supplies they did need and so they really didn't have no way of getting the materials needed to survive until people found jobs and not many could do that because people were slaves and blacks had to have money to create businesses therefore it was very, very, very hard on blacks coming out of

James T. Lynch, a black minister in a town called Savannah, describes the scene this way, “I have been here for some days. The colored people did not seem to realize that they were free, as their status was not announced by any proclamation. The scarcity of provisions, the unsettled state of things, no employment—all had the effect of causing people to stand on the threshold of freedom like the rescued passengers of a ship on a barren sea-shore, wet and shivering with the cold blast of the tempest. They wanted encouragement, advice, and strength to go forward and assume the responsibilities of free men.” With their freedom, new citizenship and all the rights and privileges that come along with that, the African Americans set off to use what they got.

The civil rights movement was a struggle by African Americans in the mid-1950s to late 1960s to achieve civil rights equal to those of whites, including equal opportunity in employment, housing, and education, as well as the right to vote, the right of equal access to public facilities, and the right to be free of racial discrimination. No social or political movement of the twentieth century has had as profound an effect on the legal and political institutions of the United States. This movement sought to restore to African Americans the rights of citizenship guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which had been eroded by segregationist jim crow laws in the South. It fundamentally altered relations between the federal government and the states, as the federal government was forced many times to enforce its laws and protect the rights of African American citizens. The civil rights movement also spurred the reemergence of the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, in

When faced with political adversity, women and black people in the United States of America are often consoled with this phrase: be patient. Eventually things will change, and time will erase the adversity that they face. This is often said as a way to restrain others from taking action and working to create change. Those who say this phrase to women and black people fail to acknowledge the change that came from the work that the people of the black and women’s liberation movements over time. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote serves as a response to that common phrase, as well as a reminder to those who strive to make change to continue their efforts, because if they didn’t, then time would overall perpetuate the status quo.

Black Power was a call to action of black people to deny an established racist society, to acknowledge their ancestors and history and to unite their black communities to gain the power to make a change. The SNCC believed that in order to develop black power they needed to close their ranks and organize themselves before reaching for something else. It encouraged people to take charge of their own lives and organizations rather than relying on whites’ influence. Black Power was a build up of strength and power in black communities to change previous white institutions and power structures that have been established for hundreds of years. Blacks did not want black visibility but rather a chance to change society for the better.