Black Americans Essay

Firstly black Americans faced problems in the south because of lynching and the Jim Crow Laws. Lynching meant that racist white Americans would put the law into their own hands and punish black people whenever they please. They would hang the victim from a tree. In 1897 123 black people were lynched in the south, 84 in 1903 and 61 in 1921. The police would turn a blind eye and made no effort to stop lynching from happening. Even though slavery ended in 1865 black people faced the threat of violence, intimidation and racial discrimination on almost a daily bases. The Jim Crow Laws were created to keep whites and coloured people away from each other. The Jim Crow Laws covered all the aspects of life. Black Americans were stopped from using the same restaurants, hotels, libries, taxis, and even cemeteries. If black people wanted to vote the Jim Crow Law made them have to pass a difficult literacy test and they would have to pay high taxes. Nearly 2million black Americans moved from the southern states to the north in hope of a better life. This was called the Great Migration They thought they would be able to escape the Jim Crow Laws and racism as a whole, they wanted to go to the north for a better chance at jobs and education but little did they know. Secondly black Americans faced problems in the south because of the KKK. The KKK stands for the Ku Klux Klan; they were a racist group and were part of a secret society. The leader of the KKK in the 1920’s was a dentist called Hiram Wesley Evans whose name in the KKK was Imperial Wizard. Only WASP’s could belong to the KKK- White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The KKK targeted blacks mainly, but they also hated Jews, Catholics and Liberals but there main focus was poor black families that were very vulnerable. 5 million white Americans joined the KKK between 1920 to 1925. Most members where poor white people because they were afraid that black people would take over their jobs. Some of the KKK members were judges, policemen and lawyers. They would dress in white sheets and white hoods to cover their identities. The KKK used a variety of different methods such as intimidation, murders, raping, whipping, lynching, castration and tar burning. The Black Americans tried to fight back using non-violent methods. The NAACP -National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People- asked the president for new laws to help combat the KKK violence but received very little results. In the 1920’s Black Americans started to turn to the ‘Back to Africa’ movement which told blacks that they should return to their native America. This was started by Marcus Garvey but the whole movement faltered when he was arrested for fraud and sent to prison. In 1926 membership of the KKK dropped from 2million to 300,000 people. Lastly black Americans faced problems in the north because there was still racism around. Black people would be sent to live in the worst parts of the poorest cities. They were last to be hired and first to be fired from any jobs that they could get their hands on. Factory owners in northern cities knew that huge numbers of black people knew how to work well because of the slavery era. So they sent people down South to encourage them to take jobs in their factories up North with promises of good salaries. They wanted to add to the pool of white workers to keep down wages. So the black workers were encouraged to move North to compete with white workers. The white workers did not welcome the black workers with open arms because they naturally saw them as a threat. The black workers were willing to work for less money at least at first. So this led to racial tension. The white Americans refused to accept black members to protect the jobs. Another thing was that white neighbourhoods did not want poor black people and the problems that came with them moving into their neighbourhoods. It was a bad situation all around and led to much racial issues and even race riots These are the problems black people faced in the USA during the 1920s.