Rosa Parks and her Impact on the African-American Community

Jim Crow laws were a set of state and native statutes that legalized segregation that occurs during the late 19th century early 20th century. The Jim Crow laws are almost like the Black Code because the black code was strictly local and state laws that detailed when, where, and the way formerly enslaved people could work, and for how much they were paid. The codes were widely recognized throughout the South as a legal acknowledgment to put African-Americans through involuntary labor, to strip their voting rights away, to regulate where they lived and how they were going around looking for children to do hard labor.

In this paper, I will be highlighting the importance of Segregation, Influential people, and court cases that pertain to Jim Crow Laws.

Jim Crow legal guidelines soon started out to spread at some stage in America with even more violence than earlier. Public parks had been not allowed for African Americans to enter, and theaters and restaurants have been segregated Segregated ready rooms in bus and train stations had been mandatory, additionally as water fountains, restrooms, building entrances, elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park cashier windows. Laws did now not permit African Americans to live in white neighborhoods. Segregation was utilized mainly in public places such as public modes of transportation, public swimming pools, restaurants and diners, and etc.

I chose this topic because I believe that racial segregation is a big topic to discuss because African-Americans as a whole have endured so much unfairness with Jim Crow Laws in place. African- Americans were restricted from many things like sitting at the front of the bus, sitting at the high counter in diners, and etc.I can’t imagine how the world would look if there was still segregation. Writing a paper about racial segregation would give me the opportunity to gain information about the topic that I never knew before and to get a better understanding of how African-Americans had to undergo challenges during those times.

Under the Jim Crow system, “whites only” and “colored” signs and symptoms proliferated across the South at water fountains, restrooms, bus-ready areas, film theaters, swimming pools, and public schools. African Americans who dared to task segregation faced arrest or violent reprisal. Signs had been used to signify where African Americans should legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. There was segregation anywhere along with public modes of transportation like buses. The first four rows of seats on each Montgomery bus had been reserved for whites. Most buses have a colored section for African-Americans towards the rear of the bus, even though a majority of bus riders are black. In eating places, African-Americans could not be served due to the shade in their skin. The Greensboro sit-in was a group of young African-American scholars who performed a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in North Carolina and did not want to leave after not being able to receive service. The sit-in motion soon spread to college towns throughout the South. During the sit-in, many of the young African-Americans were hauled away in police cars for trespassing, disorderly conduct, among other things.

When federal troops were far away from the U.S. South at the top of Reconstruction within the late 1870s and therefore the state legislatures of the previous Confederacy were not controlled by carpetbaggers and African American freedmen, those legislatures began passing Jim Crow laws that reestablished racism and codified the segregation of whites and blacks. Jim Crow laws were created to separate the black and white race from even the slightest bit of contact. The Jim Crow Laws have had an impact on both races during this time. African-Americans were mainly affected in unpleasant ways and a couple of Caucasians too. Most Caucasians were keen on the way life was under Jim Crow Laws, but some of the white race thought it had been not right because they felt African-Americans were adequate to them. African-Americans disliked the way of life they were living in the South and tried to escape to the North but usually once they tried they suffered severe consequences. Even some Caucasians were murdered by their own people trying to assist the African-Americans to gain equality and respect. Within the South, Jim Crow Laws were strongly enforced and therefore the laws made it difficult for African- Americans to measure. African-Americans wanted better lives and felt that they ought to visit the North to urge them it’s dangerous for any African-American to be going anywhere past sunset. The rationale for this is often because most Caucasian settlers didn’t feel the African-Americans deserved a far better life, so if they got the prospect they could lynch any African-American if they do something they did not like or for even the slightest look in their direction. Also, African-Americans might be stopped at any time and made to answer questions on why they were at a selected place at a selected time. There have even been certain towns that warned African-Americans to not let the sun go down on them, basically threatening them that something could happen to them after it got dark. Some of the African-Americans decided that enduring the dangerous endeavor for freedom and safety was worth the trip.

There are many influential people that have impacted the African-American community during the 19th and 20th centuries around the time that Jim Crow laws and segregation occurred. Rosa Parks is an influential woman role model to many for the movements of her civil right that she has endured such as the bus boycott. One evening Rosa Parks decided to stand up for her rights and refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the segregated bus which later led to the Montgomery bus boycott. She was then removed from the bus and arrested for breaking the law. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest throughout that African Americans refused to ride town buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. One evening Rosa Parks decided to stand up for her rights and refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the segregated bus which later led to the Montgomery bus boycott. She was then removed from the bus and arrested for breaking the law. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest throughout that African Americans refused to ride town buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott came about from the 5th day in December of 1955, to the 20th day of December in 1956, and is thought to be the primary large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American lady, was in remission and penalized for refusing to yield her bus seat to an adult male. The Supreme court decided to integrate the Montgomery bus systems, and someone who was a part of the individuals who led the boycott, a young pastor named Martin King, Jr., emerged as an outstanding leader of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr entered the civil rights movement soon after. A young recently married pastor of a Montgomery, Alabama church, he was asked to steer a bus boycott aimed toward ending segregation of transport in Montgomery. Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech that was touching to the congregation of African Americans. The boycott, initiated by Rosa Parks’ refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white traveler, lasted over a year and resulted in the integrating of the city’s busses. Ultimately, Lyndon B. Johnson was an important influential individual that made a grand decision that is very beneficial toward the African-American communities. On June 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which was the foremost sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The Act prohibited discrimination on the idea of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, public places, provided for the mixing of faculties and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. Congress expanded the act in subsequent years, passing additional legislation so as to maneuver toward more equality for African-Americans, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with a minimum of 75 pens, which he gave to members of Congress who supported the bill also as civil rights leaders, like Dr. Luther King Jr.

Lastly, there are numerous court cases that are fighting for equality for the African-American race. Some of the many important court cases are Brown v Board of Education, The Scottsboro Boys, Dred Scott v Sandford, and etc. In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court concluded that slaves weren’t citizens that were living in an exceedingly free state or territory, even for several years, failed to free slaves and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case during which the justices voted in one accord that segregation of kids in open faculties was unconstitutional. Brown v.The Board of Education was one of many monumental foundations of the civil rights movement and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and alternative services weren’t, in fact, equal in the least. In his proceedings, Brown claimed that school for black kids weren’t adequate to the white schools, which segregation desecrated the questionable “equal protection clause” of the fourteenth rule in the constitution, that holds that no state will “deny to anyone among its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, in agreement that public faculty segregation had a “detrimental result upon the colored children” and contributed to “a sense of inferiority,” however still upheld the “separate but equal” belief. In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court voted in favor of Brown. The Court found the application of segregation unconstitutional and refused to use its call in Plessy v. Ferguson to “the field of public education.” Justice Warren expert wrote the opinion for the Court. Another important court case was the case of “The Scottsboro Boys” who were falsely accused. The Scottsboro Boys were 9 black teenagers incorrectly suspect of raping 2 white ladies aboard a train close to Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. The trials and recurrent retrials of the Scottsboro Boys sparked a world uproar and made 2 landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts when the defendants were forced to pay years battling the courts and enduring the cruel conditions of the Alabama jail system.

In Conclusion, for the higher part of a century, African Americans lived underneath the burden of what is currently called Jim Crow laws. They were treated unfairly with segregation around, African-Americans had little freedom and feared getting tortured or harassed. African Americans ought to of had identical rights as whites and that they failed, therefore I think that Jim Crow Laws were unconstitutional and against the fourteenth change, as a result, the fourteenth amendment changed and it states that someone who was born or lived in the United States couldn’t have laws written and passed to require away his or her rights. Jim Crows Laws took away principally all of the African Americans’ rights. Whites treated African Americans extremely mean and cruelly. The Jim Crow Laws do still have an impression today. Even though the laws no longer exist anymore, their exhilarating spirit still sadly plays a major role in America’s political life. The example of voter suppression, across the United States, a variety of Republican state legislatures have attempted to form it harder for African Americans to vote while the illusion of fighting off fraud voters. Actual instances of voter fraud are incredibly rare and yet Republican politicians still insist that it’s a real problem. To this end, laws are passed during a number of states requiring voters to present certain sorts of ID at polling places. In many cases, African American citizens aren’t able to provide the necessary form of id in order for them to vote.

Bibliography

Bredhoff, Stacey, et al. “Rosa Parks Police Records.” Rosa Parks Police Records, U.S National Archives, 21 Dec. 2016, www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/rosa-parks/images/police-report-l.jpg.

Davey, Sophie. Segregated Water Fountains. sophiedaveyphoto.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/segregated.jpg.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Montgomery Bus Boycott.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 16 Mar. 2020, www.britannica.com/event/Montgomery-bus-boycott.

“Segregation.” AAPF, African American Policy Forum, aapf.org/segregation.

“Ten Important Supreme Court Decisions in Black History.” Ten Important Supreme Court Decisions in Black History | City of Norman, Oklahoma, City of Norman , www.normanok.gov/content/ten-important-supreme-court-decisions-black-history.

“‘I Have a Dream ‘ Martin Luther King Jr Full Speech.” I Have a Dream Speech Full Video, EDM Is Life, 5 Jan. 2017, youtu.be/yXyr95yfL3M.

Endnotes

1. https://sophiedaveyphoto.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/segregated.jpg

2. https://www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/rosa-parks/images/police-report-l.jpg

3. https://youtu.be/yXyr95yfL3M

Did you like this example?

519

27