MeaganLnf

Meagan's Homepage African Americans were treated intolerably before the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil rights movement, respect for African Americans began to improve, but most aspects of their lives were unchanged. After the Civil Rights Movement, the quality of the lives of the African Americans became better.This book is important to readers today because it describes how the treatment of the African Americans changed over many years. Now they can vote and have all the same rights as a caucasion. There were many events that contributed to the Civil Rights Movement. There was the slave trade starting in the 17th and 18th century, slavery during the civil war, and the freeing of the slaves. ” Recorded lynchings of blacks peaked in the late nineteenth century, reaching a high of 235 in 1892 and averaging 150 a year in the late 1880s and early 1890s." (pg 7). I knew that there were a lot of lynchings during this time but I was amazed to find out that it was that high. Also before this movement, the Ku Klux Klan would take away African Americans they thought did something illegal and burn their houses down to the ground. When I found this out I was so disgusted with the way we treated these people I couldn't even believe that all of those people could be taken over by the devil. The African Americans were treated so horrifically just because of the color of their skin. Once the African Americans were freed after the Civil War, the South was so enraged that they mistreated them horribly. This treatment continued to some extent for almost 100 more years until the start of the Civil Rights Movement in 1953. Even though these people were freed from slavery they still did not have the same rights as a white American. The African Americans could not vote, use the same bathroom, drink the same water, sit on the same side of a bus or restaurant, or even wait in the same line as whites. In Rhoda Lois Blumberg's book __Civil Rights: The 1960's Freedom Struggle__, it gives scary but real examples on how these people were treated. The author quotes Ann Moody, a female African American saying at the time: “Which one should I get first” a big husky boy asked. “That white nigger,” the old man said. The boy lifted Joan from the counter by her waist and carried her outside the store. Simultaneously I was snatched from my stool by two high school students. I was dragged about thirty feet toward the door by my hair when someone made them turn me loose. As I was getting up off the floor, I saw Joan coming back inside. We started back to the center of the counter to join Pearlina. Lois Chaffee, a white Tougaloo faculty member, was now sitting next to her. So Joan and I just climbed across the rope at the front end of the counter and sat down. There were now four of us, two whites and two Negroes, all women. The mob started smearing us with ketchup, mustard, sugar, pies and everything on the counter. Soon Joan and I were joined by John Salter, but the moment he sat down he was hit in the jaw with what appeared to be brass knuckles. Blood gushed from his face and someone threw salt into the open wound. Ed King, Tougaloo's chaplain rushed to him. (pg 65)After the Civil Rights Movement, the lives of African Americans finally started to become better and their dream of being considered equal to whites moved closer to reality. After I read this quote I was so distraught that we could be so cruel to so many people. I began to feel this way after reading this persons encounter that it made me wonder, were we ever were a really free country back then? This book is signifigant to the future because even though the Afericans have been given equal rights they still are judged, even the people from the north. I had a personal encounter with this kind of behavior when we moved to Tennessee. When we first got there our neighbors and most everybody we first met gave us the cold shoulder because we came from up north. These people still hold a grudge for what we did to help out the black people. I am still hurt to this day that they treated us that way even though it was 8yrs. ago. After that experiance I can really connect to how these people suffered.I have had many personal encounters that have to do with racisim, but none in which can even match what the african Americans had to deal withe for hundreds of years. Though the change for equal rights wasn’t an immediate one, it was still a big step in the right direction for the African Americans. When the blacks finally won their equal rights, they could do most anything that a white could do without the fear of getting beaten or killed. The public schools were finally integrated and segregation was ended in all stores, facilities, restaurants, and transportation systems.The journey that these people had to take was a long and scary road to freedom. The African Americans were probably the strongest and most courageous people of that time because they were fighting a battle their ancestors had also been fighting for many years before. When the African Americans finally began to achieve equality, it was like a weight had been lifted off their shoulders and they could finally be a free American. The author wrote this book to inform the reader on how life was for African Americans in 1953-1968 and how we have changed since then. The whole book seemed very sureal to me when I was reading it because of all the horrors African Americans had to live through and our people contributing to all of these racist acts.