How far is it accurate to suggest that in 1945 the chances of improving the situation for black Americans were minimal?

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How far is it accurate to suggest that in 1945 the chances of improving the situation for black Americans were minimal?

Personally, I do not believe that in 1945 the chances of improving the situation for black Americans were minimal, if by improving this also means by just a marginal amount. In many ways the situation in which the black Americans were in had been improving up to this point anyway, since slavery had been abolished and they had been granted more and more legal rights. Although black people, in many states, namely in the south-east, were still being treated in a full discriminatory fashion it is important to note that this was not entirely the case everywhere. Therefore it is already clear that the situation was being improved.

In the south, before the war, although slavery had been abolished, the introduction of the ‘Jim Crow’ laws, between 1890 and 1910, along with the Plessy vs. Ferguson case in 1896, meant that there was to be legal segregation. So, although black people were no longer slaves they were still treated with disrespect, as they were separated and in some cases restricted from accessing certain places. This effected education, healthcare, transport and other public facilities. For example, on buses black people had to sit on one side while white people sat on the other. This segregation and sense of social hierarchy meant that in the southern states many whites’ saw themselves above the blacks. White children learnt to talk down to blacks and black people were never invited into a white person’s home. On top of segregation, southern states also found ways to override the voting rights given to black people, due to the fifteenth amendment. These methods included unfair literacy tests and the right to vote if one’s grandfather had been able to do so.

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In the north, there was only a small amount of legally authorised segregation and thus black people were treated in a more equal manner. In general most black people found themselves working within the secondary sector, in the north, whereas southern black people were more often found working in the primary sector, on farms or committing to domestic jobs for wealthy whites’. Each black person in the north was therefore, on average, earning more money than each in the south, giving them a better standard of living overall. Not only were black people in the north working in the more ...

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