The political disadvantages faced by black people were mostly about voting. White people deliberately set criteria for voters, which they new that black people wouldn't be able to meet. For instance, they set up a poll tax, which many blacks obviously could not afford to pay due to their poor income from menial jobs. Literacy tests were also made a legal requirement for potential voters. Due to the poor education that blacks had received at their poorer segregated schools they could not pass the literacy tests and therefore could not vote. Although many blacks attempted at the literacy test, they were almost always said to have failed it.
Social disadvantages that black people faced derived from 'Jim Crow Laws'. Named after a white comedian's old song character and the way that Jim Crow poked fun at black people, 'Jim Crow Laws' were laws, which discriminated against blacks and encouraged segregation.
Examples of segregation would be the poorer schools that black people had to white people, which resulted in poorer education. Also, buses were segregated. The front of the bus was reserved for whites whereas the back of the bus was reserved for blacks A black person was also expected to give their seat to a white person if no further seats were available. An example of such an incident, but when someone refused to give up their seat would be when Rosa Parks, a black woman resisted this rule and refused to get up. Her resistance resulted in her arrest, thus setting the beginning of 'The Bus Boycott'. Up until the 1940s, when fewer places were segregated, anything and everything from clothes at laundrettes to blood at blood banks were segregated.
Schools were also segregated and so blacks received poorer education to whites resulting in menial jobs. However, even a well-educated black person probably would have had a menial job due to racism, discrimination and whites being in power. This is mainly an economical disadvantage.
Lastly, black people faced many physical disadvantages. They received mental and physical abuse by the 'Ku Klux Klan' because of their race. 'The Ku Klux Klan', a secret society whose aim was to make blacks inferior to whites attacked black people's villages and schools. They even resorted to lynching. Another physical disadvantage that black people faced was their poor housing and diets. Housing was an issue partly because of poor income and therefore not enough money to buy a decent house. Also, 'black villages' tended to be smaller and not as nice as 'white villages. Poor diet was also a result of poor income.
It can therefore be seen that black people faced many disadvantages in the 1950s.
