Preview

Segregation: Martin Luther King

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1189 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Segregation: Martin Luther King
In the early 1900s America was torn apart in a battle known as segregation. The African American race was treated unjustly and faced a tough journey. They were shoved aside and torn apart from the Caucasian Americans. There was separate railroad cars, schools, and even to such small insignificant things as separate water fountains. The white children were being taught to treat African Americans as dirty people who deserved to be separate. It created a prejudice that would take years to overcome, to completely be unselfish again. Caucasian Americans were very wrong in their thinking and they never thought about how it made African Americans feel. The African Americans of this time period were struggling to overcome this new time where they were treated as outsiders, as if they were not a part of the American people. Every single human being is uniquely different and segregation was a constant battle our fellow Americans fought to overcome, all for the sole purpose of gaining equality.

There were Caucasian people who thought segregation was a good thing and supported it strongly. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with separate facilities and they didn’t even wonder about how African Americans lives were affected by this injustice. African Americans rights were basically stripped away all because they were viewed as “different.” A Florida congressman, Frank Clark, was open about his views on segregation. He truly believed segregation was a great thing and he supported this belief. When talking about the railroad cars he explains that it is good to have separate ones. He blames the conditions of the cars on the African Americans. He states to “imagine a nice, new passenger coach, packed with dirty, greasy, filthy negroes, down South in midsummer, and you can readily understand why that car does not long remain as good, as clean, and a as desirable as a similar car occupied exclusively by white travelers” (Frank Clark praises segregation 37). In

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    After the Civil War, several amendments were passed which granted black Americans the right of citizenship and the abolishment of slavery. The south eventually came up with ways around slavery like sharecropping, Jim Crow Laws, and white supremacist like the KKK. After the civil war was over the southern farmers had to come up with a way of producing their crops at a very low price, so they began sharecropping. Sharecropping was basically a step ahead of slavery, but the new freed slaves still could not make enough money to support themselves. Another reason as to why the African Americans could not socially be integrated with the whites is because of the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws segregated the whites and the blacks. There were laws that said that whites and blacks couldn’t be in the same school or share the same bathroom. Another set of laws that the south put on the African Americans was the black codes. The black codes consisted of curfews, vagrancy laws, labor contracts, and land restrictions. No blacks were aloud out after sunset or else they would be arrested. The vagrancy laws said that if any black was not working could be finned or whipped and sold into labor. Finally, the African…

    • 766 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The colored knew that being arrested by the Americans was dangerous because of the treatment towards them, but they still insisted and committed law violations to get arrested. The whites saw the colored people dangerous when it came to jobs or worse mating with Americans and mixing. Segregation was to keep the colored people in their place to the point of not being able to live even in the same town as Americans. Africans had specific areas where they could leave. When voting, American knew that colored people would have no educations so the laws for voting where to those that could not read or write could not vote this prevented colored from voting.…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    African americans everyday lives were changed so much. In the 50’s all major railroad companies had to build certain rail cars called jim crow cars. These rail cars are often rundown and old. They often didn't even have seats in them. Some states often said “it shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers” (Jim Crow Law). it was even hard for african american kids to go to the park if they even had a colored park.…

    • 455 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In addition, Martin Luther King Jr. had numerous hopes in what he wanted to accomplish. Martin Luther King Jr. used the strategy of fighting in a peaceful way to seek equality and challenge the unjust authorities (King, Martin Luther, Jr. 9). MLK suggested that the best way to end with segregation was under nonviolent protests. Government was holding a ironic position by proclaiming segregation as unconstitutional but allowing other states to practice it (Parel, “Civil Disobedience”). As an activist against segregation, King wanted to culminate segregation in every corner of the country; which was a problem that was generating unemployment (“Martin Luther King, Jr.”). Even though people were…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Even after slavery was banned in the southern states, the white population made it hard for African Americans to live. It was already hard for them to find a good job because they had been slaves their whole life and didn’t not know how to live a free life. This would cause many of them to move to other states pursuing a better life. As time took its course, many African Americans began to prosper. Many had found jobs in northern states and had started a life. Their life appeared to have changed from when they were slaves, but it was actually almost the same as if they were still under slavery. This factor that would follow many free slaves throughout the Untied States was racism. African Americans fell victims of racism in many ways some of them by not being able to vote and not being able to have the same rights as the white population. This would torment African Americans for decades. It kept getting worse over time to the point where clans were being formed to persecute African Americans throughout the country. They would be persecuted for numerous reasons, some of which just seem as an excuse to torment the black community. African Americans would be executed because they would be falsely blamed for harsh crimes such as rape and burglary. They would immediately be blamed for these crimes because it was believed that African Americans did not poses the same intelligence as the Anglos. This idea would be embraced by many college professors who also believed in white supremacy. According to The American Challenge, many of these college professors wrote books over this subject stating that, “African Americans possessed less intelligence and a greater tendency toward crime than Americans of European decent” (764). These statements were like adding fuel to a fire, in this case the fire would represent the racism that was consuming the African…

    • 1848 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Tulsa Race Riots

    • 1743 Words
    • 7 Pages

    With all this prosperity and wealth many African Americans were happy but many whites saw this as a threat. They saw African Americans who prospered as a threat to their power, to the way things use to be (African Americans being slaves, or children of them). There were some African Americans that had better homes and better jobs than some whites. Many in the White community could not stand for it. Hatred and resentment grew and it was adding fuel to the fire that was waiting to be…

    • 1743 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    black and white would become so interwined, that the people will not be judged by…

    • 3853 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Ever since the beginning of the slave trade, African Americans were viewed as inferior individuals by the American people. Segregation only brought a deeper barrier between the races. “White” people thought that people of color were not opt to be in a position as high as them. African americans were targeted and they suffered with poor treatment until their equality became true. They were the main targets because they were afraid of the old customs making a return. Slavery had made to African American people very defenseless and liable. Segregation affected our history greatly and was a giant step into every citizens equality.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The rising popularity of racialized movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite affirm that racial equality is still a goal. It is not something that has been achieved, though many credit Martin Luther King, Jr. as the pioneer of advancing America to being a “post-racial” (cite) society. His monumental speech “I Have a Dream” marked a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, yet it did not end the conversation. Decades later, former president Bill Clinton addressed the pandemic of black-on-black crime at the Convocation of the Church of God in Christ. Years following the proposal of the Clinton Administration’s 1993 Crime Bill, George W. Bush and Barack Obama gave speeches advocating for systemic and societal equality, respectively,…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Segregation was just the half of it, cause most of the black schools were being help much by the government and education wasn’t provided at the same level as white schools there for the poverty was high and these blacks schools were of low achieving. I also believe that the segregation issue extended far beyond just public places, such as harassment towards the black students in the streets.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    African Americans did not like the ways that they were treated by the whites. People felt very strongly to the fact that that they should not be treated like…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 25th 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States of America. He was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States and he is frequently referenced as a human rights icon. King became a civil rights activist early in his career. King led many non-violent protests, to make his point; such as sit-ins, strikes, marches, speeches and boycotts. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he raised public consciousness of the civil rights movement and established himself as one of the greatest orators in U.S. history. During this speech King used many memorable lines such as “I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will join hands with little white boys and girls as brothers and sisters.…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There have long been prejudice and discrimination against different races, especially people of African origin. But there have always been those who are courageous, fearless, and willing to do anything necessary to fulfill their dreams, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X, and Mahatma Gandhi. Today I am here to talk about Martin Luther King and his dream for an equal world. I want to show that despite some progress over the past five decades, African Americans have not yet achieved full parity with white U.S. citizens.…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Segregation was the start to a new life for african americans. In the novel Rosa Parks My Story by Rosa Parks and Jim haskins, Rosa tells the struggle for equal rights for all Americans. In the 1900s African Americans could not attend the same schools as whites that is when HBCUs came along, they gave African Americans a good education,a degree,and the start of ending segregation.…

    • 215 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The South African extremist and previous president Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) conveyed a conclusion to politically-sanctioned racial segregation and has been a worldwide promoter for human rights. An individual from the African National Congress party starting in the 1940s, he was a pioneer of both serene dissents and furnished resistance against the white minority's severe administration in a racially isolated South Africa. His activities landed him in jail for about three decades and made him the substance of the antiapartheid development both inside his nation and universally. Discharged in 1990, he took an interest in the destruction of politically-sanctioned racial segregation and in 1994 turned into the principal dark president of South…

    • 158 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays