Is Yet To Be Determined If The Segregation Was Worse... Essay - 2,109 words

Is yet to be determined if the segregation was worse before or after the Civil War. Before the Civil war there were even certain officials, whose duty was to research and analyze roots and ancestry of the society members for determining their pure background, without any black ancestors. If somebody has black ancestors, no matter, how far in generations they stood, those people were considered Blacks and they were heavily fined, or even enslaved. Kate Chopin's story "Desirees Baby" that was written in 1893, vividly portrays the reality of the pre-Civil War society with all its drawbacks. Kate Chopin was a famous feminist and in her works she revealed womens search of emancipation, she looked for an understanding of personal freedom that questioned conventional demands of both men and women. The story "Desirees Baby" is her most famous and discussed work, because it rises not only problems by emancipation, but very important and global problems of racism and slaver, physical, as well as spiritual.


Chopins characters are of French descent and live in Louisiana. In this story the author raises important themes of dangerous and destructive racism, the nature of which is so horrible, that nothing can stand against is, not love, not moral values. People were so afraid of being considered Black, of sharing the destiny of the Black people that very few had strength to accept the truth of their ancestry of that of their relatives. The letter, written by Armands mother uncovered the mystery of the childs ancestry. But above all, she wrote, night and day, I thank the good God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery. Armand didnt possess the strength and dignity of his father, and the fact, that he found out about his background only after the death of Desiree is not a key factor in the theme of racism.


The key factor is authors reveal of the horrible fact, that the white people were well aware of the position, on which they doomed the black people. They were conscious of all the horrors that that filled their every day life, all the injustices. The white people by turning the Blacks into slaves robbed them the life itself, but this blatant fact was considered a norm, until it concerned the welfare of the whites. By enslaving the Black people, by considering them inferior and worthy of such attitude the white people enslaved themselves. By imposing all these double standards the white people could be officially analyzed by their fellow citizens and proclaimed not worthy to be the members of the society. This sad irony led to further horrible actions, like denial of parents, like betrayal, like murder. The discovery of the letter makes Armands racism and attitude irrational. His shame, that he experienced for his wife shifted on himself.


But his attempt of hiding the new fact reveals his own moral slavery, which was common for the most other whites in the society. After the Civil War Blacks were able to experience some real freedom, granted by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. But by 1890 the Blacks civil rights in both, North and South states were much less supported and Supreme Courts recurred to segregation, and it terribly contradicted the freedoms, for which the Founding Fathers fought in the Was of Liberty, for which only recently Lincolns army fought in the Civil War, and which were granted in those new Acts and Amendments. From the last two decades of the nineteenth century till 1960-es many most of the American states enforced racial segregation that was imposed by Jim Crow laws. Segregation and racial inequality was created in several steps. Black people were ordered to read the Constitution since illiterate people had no right to vote; a tax for voting had to be paid; only those people could vote whose grandfathers were legal citizens of the country and had rights to vote. But the majority of the Black people were former uneducated and slaves who didnt possess much money, they didnt qualify to any of the clauses and this law excluded them from those who had rights to vote.


The process of segregation in all the aspects of life existed by law and socially, not legally sanctioned. In many states it was legal to officially punish people that tried to communicate or hover close to the members of the white race. The most common and widely spread laws forbade intermarriage and enforced separate places for different races in the city communes of residence, public places and business establishments. It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in violation of this section shall be void. Georgia, The...Utilities Commission...is empowered and directed to require the establishment of separate waiting rooms at all stations for the white and colored races.


North Carolina. These Law were based on the Black Codes that were used on railroads in segregation before Civil War. The civil rights movement started to the full in the mid-1950s and it was mostly a grassroots, bottom-up phenomenon, which was based in religious congregations rather than a movement initiated and supported primarily by outsiders - particularly white, Northern liberals. Black people were excluded from almost all the factors of white society, including church. In the black communities began forming Black churches, which were against what white churches taught. .


The Black churches possessed power within the black community and represents the community in the white society. Churches became the only place for Blacks to find refuge since the application of Jim Craws rules. As African-American Christians moved from slavery to emancipation their religious practices and houses of worship also changed. Black church leaders used their authority for combine the teachings of Christianity with political manifestos. Within church based organizations the contemporary events were seen through the prism of the religious history and culture and was formed the political conscious. Many political sociologists and social movement theorists wrote books that expand our perception of religious institutions and their role in expanding of democracy. In the book Origins of the Civil Rights Movement by Aldon Morris, the author starts by picturing the essential aspects of the Southern black culture, which played very important part in the elevati ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: civil right, civil rights, rights movement, luther king, martin luther

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