A Clash of Races: Whites and African Americans in the South During the 1930’s
The indicated piece of writing features a freshly constructed scope on the true struggles suffered by the valiant and enduring African American pride as they were freed into what was believed to be “liberty”. However, the truth remained far from this wdely considered proposition.
A sharp crack pierces the still, fresh air of the early evening. Another crack pursues the first as an almost inhuman cry shatters the air, followed by a high-pitched scream of pain mingled with terror and the distressed, earsplitting wail of an infant. Suddenly, dead silence envelopes the scene. Such events were typical in the South during the 1930’s, for African Americans were often the main victims of segregation and prejudice established by white supremacists. Although slavery had finally ceased, tensions between the two races continued to be fragile, threatening to crack and break open.
To commence with, numerous public accommodations and groups were segregated during this period of time in history, especially in the southern states. For instance, blacks were mandated by law to have used separate drinking fountains and restrooms from whites. Additionally, black individuals attended different schools from the well-to-do white institutions and were denied service or required to be in a separated “colored” section in some restaurants, hotels, shops, bus terminals, and other everyday sites. Buses and other forms of public transportation provided white men with luxurious front seats and blacks with simple back seats. Furthermore, the military, all-white sport teams, and certain labor unions were largely segregated. These divisions among blacks and whites were frequently referred to as “separate but equal” by the white population, yet the painful reality was that blacks dwelled under conditions far from equal to those of whites even though both groups suffered significantly during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, which marked a low point of extreme delay in the United States economy. Clearly, unequal academic opportunities and public accommodations unjustly deprived African Americans of the human rights that were then applied only to whites.
Moreover, blacks confronted oppression and violent acts committed to them by prejudiced white supremacists. As an example, Southern whites performed menacing practices, such as lynching or the bombing of black homes, to intimidate African Americans and threaten their safety. Other examples of such violence included the beating, stabbing, shooting, or bombing of blacks even remotely suspicious of attempting or having ever attempted organizing against their white superiors. African Americans living in the South were evidently denied the inalienable rights of all human beings due to the brutal treatments they faced.
Furthermore, black and poor Caucasian sharecroppers dwelling in rural areas of the South were typically dependent on their wealthy white landowners, who gained inexpensive labor from the great swarms of unemployed African Americans seeking for occupations. The landowners rented out undersized plots of land, set to provide a sufficient number of land plots for the multiple workers, and farming tools to the sharecroppers, which resulted in a renting charge, keeping black farmers in debt. The workers and their families were also loaned two-room shanties for their toil and given little or no pay. Additionally, they were permitted to keep only a diminutive fraction of the crops they harvested, thus suffering from malnutrition, eventually leading to grave ailments. The prosperous Caucasian landowners, however, received the larger percent of the crops and led luxurious lifestyles consisting of the possession of ample food and vast tracts of land. To add even more, black sharecroppers faced discrimination from their landowners and other white workers, for the whites believed in their supreme position over blacks simply due to skin color. As a result, African American sharecroppers, as all other black workers, became the core victims of job discrimination, causing them to adopt the slogan “Last Hired and First Fired” to communicate to the world the hardships that they had confronted every single day while living in a racially prejudiced society focused on white superiority. Despite these and multiple other setbacks, blacks retained their mighty will and united power throughout this dark period of abhorrence and hostility centered at them to endeavor succeeding under discriminatory conditions.
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