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African American History

1.

The reconstruction era promised the end of racism and equal rights to black people in

America. The era began after the end of the civil war in 1965 between northern states and

southern confederate states. Before that, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of America,

initiated talks on the Ten-point programs that led to abolishing slavery by 13th December

1965(Tuck, 1). The end of slavery promised greater rights and freedoms for the black people

who had undergone humiliation and discrimination for a long time. Furthermore, the 15th

amendment ensured that African American men had the right to vote. However, although these

rights got established in the constitution, the reconstruction era failed to ensure the

implementation of African Americans' rights. Racial discrimination and perpetration continued

in a systemized manner that although African Americans were free, they had limitations of

economic, political, and social freedom. The killing of George Floyd and the onset of the Black

Lives Matter (BLM) campaign results from the reconstruction era's failure to institutionalize the

rights and freedoms of African Americans. Furthermore, it failed to tame the Jim crow before it

got abandoned by African Americans' redeemers in 1877. Therefore, even though the

reconstruction era led to the end of slavery, it failed to follow up on implementing the rights and

freedoms of African Americans.

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2.

Booker. T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B Du Bois had a significant impact on the

civil rights movements that shaped the contemporary strategies that African Americans use to

campaign for equality. Because the three had higher education, they published articles, gave

speeches, and challenged white supremacy. Ida B. Wells, a journalist by profession, covered

racist stories while Du Bois wrote books that exposed the deteriorating condition in which

African Americans lived. However, despite using similar methods to advocate for black people's

rights, the three elites had different ideologies. Washington's strategy pertained to redeeming the

ghoulish reputation that the whites had imprinted on African Americans (Norrel, 3). He felt that

by painting the black people with positive images, he would diffuse the beast and criminal

stereotypes inducted by the white people. Contrary to this, Well’s agenda involved exposing the

evils perpetrated by the white masses. She covered lynching stories where African Americans

had been killed and burnt by the racist mob (Royster, 2). Thus, whereas Washington painted

Black people as normal human beings, Wells showed the White supremacists’ beastly side. Du

Bois, however, had a different approach that inducted education to attain equality for the Black

person. He asserted that the Blacks will have mental decolonization through education, giving

them similar standards to the Whites. However, despite their contrastive approaches in fighting

racial discrimination, they had an immense contribution to the civil rights movement.

3.
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The Jim Crow institutionalized system of propagating discrimination to African

Americans faced harsh opposition from Black Leaders. The Jim Crow laws treated African

Americans as second-class citizens in America by inducting anti-black laws that contradicted the

13th and 15th amendments. Booker. T Washington openly attacked those discriminatory laws in

his public speeches without fear of repatriation. He told the Washington Post that forcing

Africans to ride in the Jim Crow car would not last long because people of color had already

known their superiority (Norrel, 2). In his Atlanta speech, he told more than sixteen thousand

black people that they were not inferior to the whites. Although there existed excessive

punishment for Africans who violated the Jim Crow, Africans nevertheless continued to break

these rules prompted by the increasing heat of the civil rights movement. Ida Wells challenged

the Jim Crow social rule that prohibited African American men from having a relationship with a

white woman (Royster, 1). She posed the unspoken question that if assaulting a white woman by

merely touching him constituted a crime, then what truth lay in her body. The question raised

debate on what more special thing a white woman had over a black woman.

The black people formed communities where they lived together to enhance their

economy. In these communities, they bought land which they farmed to produce cheap foods for

themselves. Also, they operated barbershops where they served customers from all races. They

built schools for black children and employed their teachers. Churches played an imperative role

in the Jim Crow era (Tuck,4). Black ministers gave hope to the black congregation that hope still

existed and that the future promised great freedom. This positive future prospective enhanced the

civil rights movement as it empowered more and more black people to fight. In one incidence,

Ida Wells challenged the Jim Crow laws by sitting in a coach instead of the smoking car on the

train, resulting in the conductor forcefully removing her from the train (Royster, 11). She sued
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the train company and won, a feat that showed that even the racist laws had a weakness. In the

political sphere, Black people continued to fight for voting rights which Jim Crow had banned.

But most fights against Jim Crow laws happened through collective assemblies of black people

where civil rights leaders instituted revolutionary spirit in the Black masses.
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Works Cited

Norrel, Robert. "The New and Improved Negro." The House I Live In: Race in the American

Century, New York, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 43–47.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign

of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. Second Edition ed., Boston, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016.

Tuck, Stephen. "Freedom Is Not Enough." We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom

Struggle from Emancipation to Obama, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010, pp.

37–70.