African Americans In The Early 1900's

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate November 2001

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In the beginning of the twentieth century the African Americans of the United States were treated unfairly, to inhumane extremes, with acts so cruel that they would scar Americans for decades to come. During these years, Americans were almost a different culture than the Americans of today. With years of oppression, government sponsored segregation, corruption in most all of the systems of government, and large groups of crazy racist, the America for African Americans then, was hardly even a real taste of what America should be to every citizen.

With laws in the country, such as the Jim Crow laws, which could have only been put in to effect for the purpose of degrading and publicly humiliating the African Americans they were directed at. The laws themselves were a slap in the face to the ideas of democracy, which America was founded on. When a law is in effect that says, you must enter a building though a different door than people of other races, no matter which door you wish to enter though, and you can be arrested and convicted of a crime if you don't; it is apparent that the Jim Crow laws, could only have been put into effect to embarrass African Americans. These laws are not in anyway, a part of democracy that Americans today know as, counting each person as an equal with rights. The Jim Crow laws were a total infringement of the rights of African American. Who is to say, that the man beside you can drink from this fountain but you must drink from another fountain, which in most likely not as well kept or well cleaned, and for no other reason but that you have different skin colors a thing which you control no more than, which way...