Essay Example on African Americans' Struggle for Equality Post WWII

The growth and development of African Americans movement all started when the African Americans won the war against Nazi racism. The blacks found this to be a great chance to win a first class citizenship in the United States (Exploring American Histories, page 841). Unfortunately on coming back home they found that the whites didn’t collaborate to fight racial equality. They came to find most whites were ready and determined to maintain the traditional racism order (Exploring American Histories, page 841).

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In 1946 after a race riot erupted in Columbia and so many blacks were killed and their houses and businesses torched, in South Carolina a black man was harassed for arguing with a white driver and in Mississippi the Senator didn’t allow the blacks to vote the NAACP demanded for the president to chip in to combat the reign of error. The President responded in 1946 by creating a committee (Exploring American Histories, page 843). The committee was known as the President’s committee on civil rights. It was created to investigate on the scenarios that affected the black. It was effective immediately. The executive order that the President gave was effective since in 1947 the first black baseball player entered the major leagues; Jackie Robinson (Exploring American Histories, page 843). It was the first sign of hope of change. The following year the committee also presented a report on racial desegregation that showed that everywhere starting from the military to transport to education there was racial segregation. That report led to the president giving another order to desegregate all armed forces (Exploring American Histories, page 843).

Even thou the President had desegregated the armed forces, segregation continued in all other aspects. In 1950s the blacks and the whites had separate schools, separate educational facilities and separate quantity and quality of resources provided in the schools. In the transport sector it was no different, the blacks would give seats to the whites who joined the bus later (Exploring American Histories, page 844). In 1955 the leader of the organization; Montgomery Improvement Association; that coordinated the protest was arrested for refusing to give up his seat to a white man. The arrest led to the protest for bus segregation. The bigger mistake being arresting the leader of the protesting group. More than a year later, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of desegregation of Montgomery’s buses (Exploring American Histories, page 844).

The civil rights movement had been successful in bringing down most walls of racial segregation but the southern resisted these segregation. The southern started by rejecting Brown V Board of Education decision to stop segregation in schools (Document 25.2). After Brown V said that there wasn’t supposed to be any kind of segregation in school, the whites in the southern preferred to close down their schools just because they never believed in equality and sharing their facilities with the blacks. They were ready to follow and emphasize the racial segregation and discrimination. The reason was that they knew that they would get away with everything as long as they let the white supremacy rule reign (Document 25.2).

In 1960 the civil rights movement intensified. A political presidential candidate named Kennedy had promised to take action on civil rights. However, he did so little comparing to what he had promised (Exploring American Histories, page 862). His situation was made harder by the condition that all key positions in the Congress were held by the Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats threatened to block any civil rights proposals that Kennedy had used as his key component in his politics (Exploring American Histories, page 862).

In Albany in 1961, there was a lot of segregation in transportation facilities. It led to a lot of violence and deaths. The President and his brother worked out a compromise to let the transport facility run without segregation in order to save the nations image (Exploring American Histories, page 863). In 1963 when Kennedy was the president, delivered a speech that said that the congress was supposed to end segregation in all public facilities. His agenda was left unsolved since he died in 1963 and Johnson became the president (Exploring American Histories, page 863).

In 1964 after Johnson became the president, he continued Kennedys work. Under his leadership the Civil rights Act of 1964 passed the law that prohibited segregation in public accommodations including in schools and employment. The civil rights act also included the right to vote (Exploring American Histories, page 864). The nation needed attention on this problem of segregation so the SNCC, CORE, NAACP and SCLC launched the Freedom Summer project in Mississippi. The projects aim was to improve the education sector for the blacks by creation of freedom schools. It also noted disenfranchised in Mississippi and also worked on it (Exploring American Histories, page 864).

Later after there were many summer freedom schools set up that the northern white volunteers came to Mississippi. The schools in Hattiesburg were much staffed. So they came down to Mississippi to make changes. To be part of the community to show them that they should not hate blacks (Document Project 26.6). They wanted to engage in the activities with the blacks such as making the summer schools organized, helping in registration and even help with the school enrolment. The northern whites were ready to make changes to show that the whites were not as bad as they appeared (Document Project 26.6).

The African Americans in Mississippi had no problem with the white volunteers. According to a letter that Nancy wrote; a person who was a member of the white volunteer, the blacks were happy with them. She said that the time she was there they were offered smiles and handshakes from the Negro community (Document Project 26.6). The community welcomed them warm-heartedly that’s why they said that were it not for those whites who had come, things would have been much worse. The government responded positively because of their presence in the black society. It was of great advantage that they were there. Their rich parents also played a very great role in the development of Mississippi. Their welfare and well being was of great concern (Document Project 26.6).

Voter registration and political organization also focused on freedom summer schools. The reason was because the main agenda was to convince as many blacks as possible to register for voting. Considering the kind of disenfranchisement that was in Mississippi, convincing blacks to register needed good planning and coordination (Document Project 26.5). The civil rights freedom fighters who had undergone political and social injustice couldn’t have been easily convinced. They needed the support of the government and the whole country. They used the summer schools because the elites were liberal and had dedicated themselves to eliminate racial injustice (Document Project 26.5).

Conclusion

In conclusion, African Americans war against segregation and discrimination based on race at least finally yielded. They at last got the rights to vote and segregation in the military, transportation sector and public facilities banned. They won the battle, but the war still continued since till to date America is a racist nation. Especially towards the African Americans.