The Slavery Within Their Freedom
As blacks were given this amount of freedom the Southern States ‘hated’ it. They had hatred towards the blacks because of the rights they were receiving. The Southerners actually found ways of going into action because of what was happening, and they decided not to fund the schools which forced them to be shut down. As well as this they were burnt down and the pupils within them beaten by whites. It was not only schools but share croppers, they were made to buy tools from whites and this usually resulted in debt. So basically the whites tried to trap the blacks in some way and make them suffer.
Blacks in the South found a difference between legal rights (dejure) and what they were allowed to do (defacto). Even though the laws were passed as black men being able to vote, they were still prevented from doing so by violent whites who went around as armed gangs.
The result of all the events going on brought out the ‘Jim Crow’ laws to divide blacks and whites as a form of segregation. Whites say it was to put the blacks in their place. These laws stopped the shared use of restaurants, schools, public transport, housing and hotels - at that point being referred to as ‘white’ schools, transport etc. As the years passed the blacks were slowly gaining more opportunities and people were even seeing black candidates being elected to Congress, State governments and city councils. They also started attending universities. This was a shock for Southern whites, so they stated to form and join anti-black groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan were murderers and were against whites who supported blacks (Pro-Black Whites) too. The anti-black groups usually performed rapes and lynching. Lynching was gone about without trial and blacks were lynched purely because of racial hatred. After this there was a rise in discrimination and whites gave blacks the worse end of the stick, they gave them the worst jobs etc.
Still at the start of the 20th century there was discrimination. In some states, marriage between blacks and whites was banned, blacks couldn’t vote because of new property and tax rules plus the violence. By 1910 is was impossible for most blacks to vote. Because of this they lost their property and returned to poverty.
Conclusion
It was only recently, in 1965, that blacks finally got the freedom that they were long overdue. After 100 years of actually being given their freedom to then actually getting their freedom. So the 12 years of a false dawn from 1865 to 1877, which was the reconstruction after the Civil War, was then extended up to 1965 where blacks finally got their freedom guaranteed on paper by President Johnson. He passed the Voting Rights Act ‘which enforced civil rights and guaranteed voting rights for African Americans’.
Today people in parts of the USA are still being racially attacked and killed by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and this is after all that has happened since slavery first took place. The racial abuse would be very bad today if we didn’t have non-violent protestors like Martin L. King and Malcolm X who changed the ways of the Black American community.
