Trina E Clark
HIST 2200
4/30/12
Although the United States is considered a melting pot for culture, religion, and race; there are
still prejudices that exist today and have existed since this country’s beginning. As a part of
Americanization there are multiple groups that have and continue to have difficulty finding
complete acceptance in American society. Of all the groups we have studied in this class, they
all have had hardships with equality, acceptance, and assimilation. I think African Americans
(Blacks) have endured the most difficult time being completely accepted. I chose this group,
because the prejudices and hardships against them have stemmed from America’s inception.
Our textbook states as there is no such thing as a “white race”, some think “whiteness” is
construct of society which forms into a separate identity (Olson, p. 10). This concept of
whiteness has been carried into definitions of beauty and status (Olson, p. 10). Race has played a
part in almost every facet of American politics and some believe that this marginalizes people of
color and denies them access to benefits (Olson, p. 10).
Early African Americans have their origins in slavery. In 1443, the first African slaves were
taken by the Portuguese (Olson, p. 95). The Portuguese developed the slave trade and in a
century it had moved through America and the Caribbean. In 1619, Dutch merchants brought
the first slaves to Virginia (Olson, p. 96). Southern dependence (from cotton) on slave labor
grew until the plantation economy in the south grew into millions of slaves (Olson, p. 101).
Blacks were treated as subhuman and chattel, another man’s property.
Even after the Civil War and Reconstruction, nothing really changed in the South. This is
evident in the elections of former confederates that enacted illegal legislation (i.e., Jim Crow
Laws & black codes) to keep the former slaves out of politics. The Ku Klux Klan was one group
in the South that used terror tactics in order to create submission in Blacks. Segregation and civil
rights played an important role in the continued fight for equality as well. There were rulings
from the Supreme Court that finally broke Jim Crow, sadly not until the 40s and 50s. These
cases include: Mitchell vs. United States (1941), Morgan vs. Virginia (1946), Shelley vs.
Kraemer (1948), McLaughlin vs. Florida (1964), Smith vs. Allwright (1944), Schnell vs. Davis
(1949), McLaurin vs. Oklahoma State Regents (1950), and Brown vs. Board of Education
(1954). Each case ruled on some aspect against Jim Crow Laws. Some included: violations of
the Interstate Commerce Act, invalidate segregation on interstate transportation, invalidate
white-only primaries and literacy tests, and invalidating the inferior status put on Black children
in segregated schools (Olson, p. 250).
America has evolved since its days on the plantation, but it is important to realize that the work
is not over, just because the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s is. Acceptance, assimilation,
and tolerance are concepts that must be continually worked for. The fact that we are still fighting
the same issues is evidence of that.