but of course they weren’t. Many states spent four or five times as much on white schools as on
black. On buses the black citizens had to sit at the back, and even then they had to give up their
seats if a white person wanted it. This sparked off the first big protest against segregation, when
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man in Montgomery. She was arrested, and the
NAACP started a bus boycott that led eventually to desegregation and the emergence of Martin
Luther King as a Civil Rights leader. This indicates that they were treated as second class citizens
Segregated schools were particularly nefarious because the lack of education affected the work that African Americans could do. They were mostly limited to menial jobs, were paid less than white people and were more likely to be unemployed. In the north they worked in factories, but in the south many were share-croppers and lived of surplus. This meant that they had to share their crop with the landlord in place of rent, and to pay for seeds, tools etc. Often the prices were set so high that they never got out of debt. Some attempts to improve black schools were made by the NAACP, who got a Supreme Court decision in the case of Linda Brown to say that separate was not equal, and that schools should be desegregated, but little happened by 1955. Even after that progress was slow, and in 1957 the President had to send troops to Little Rock to make sure that black students were allowed into the High School.
Another way in which black people were treated as second class was by being denied the vote.
In theory they had had the vote since the American Civil War, but in practice ways were found to
stop them voting. Some states had ‘grandfather clauses’ to stop them registering, or they were set
impossible tests like having to recite the Constitution or say how many bubbles there were in a bar
of soap. This meant they were powerless to help themselves by voting for politicians who would
improve matters, and even in the north, where they could vote, it didn’t help because they were such a minority there and also tended to be crowded into small areas.
Despite the hostilities that the African Americans received their positions were gradually becoming better as more cases went through the Supreme Court. For example in the cases of Missouri V Canada, Smith V Ailwrite and Brown V Topeka board of education, It became apparent that improvements in the civil rights of African Americans were being made in terms of desegregation and the right to vote. However this in itself didn’t indicate that African Americans were seen as equal but merely shows there was an attempt to make them equal to white people.
In the North the racial climate was of another sort; African Americans would be able to share transport and eating facilities with white people in ways not allowed in the south. Northern white people were not prejudiced and could show their friendship more easily than southern white people. The latter would often be under pressure to conform to the general mood of segregation. They were also able to cast their vote much more freely in northern states. This meant that in a few places their vote could be really valuable such as in Chicago. This illustrates the fact that the northern state saw African Americans as equal with white people, not making them second class citizens. However the cycle of poverty that existed during the years in the north made the equality appear as a facade. It was apparent that there were poor housing conditions, black areas were usually seen as ghettos and predominantly black schools were having considerably inferior facilities in contrast to the white ones. Therefore it can be said that the price for equality limited them in their freedom to excel up the economic ladder.
In conclusion to this, it is right to say that African Americans were treated as second class citizens to an extent, at large in south and at the least in the north. There were many attempts at desegregation, for example when President Truman desegregated the armed forces and employed more black people, but this change was slow. Overall and in mainly the south, African Americans were mistreated politically, socially, culturally denied the rights that a citizen should have and finally economically disadvantaged as depicted in my final point on the cycle of poverty.