African Americans and Their Struggles for Civil Rights over Centuries

There have been struggles, for all races, to make this a great nation. Many have lost and compromised over time just to survive. However, the African Americans have been lynched, hanged, burned, dragged and their skin has even been cut from their bones just because they wanted what every human alive deserves, Civil Rights. The African Americans was freed by President Lincoln on January 01, 1863 by the Emancipation of Proclamation and have fought for their rights, in this great nation, throughout history. The African Americans endured significant discrimination and hardships in the United States in the years after 1877 due to their race, but was able to fight to gain equality through race riots and marches for freedom over centuries.

The African Americans began to fight back against discrimination after the Emancipation of Proclamation. Amidst the struggles for political realignment, many segments of society pursued interests of their own. The New South strove to return African Americans to a subservient position through the imposition of Jim Crow laws, Barnes, L. & Bowles, M. (2013). The so-called Jim Crow’s law fueled the infamous race riot of 1898. Southern whites argued that allowing African Americans into politics would lead to miscegenation. In Wilmington, North Carolina in November of 1898 more than one-thousand White Southerners attacked African American’s businesses and citizens resulting in several deaths. Harry Hayden, one of the rioters, stated that many of the mob were respectable citizens. "The Men who took down their shotguns and cleared the Negroes out of office yesterday were not a mob of plug uglies.

They were men of property, intelligence, culture ... clergyman, lawyers, bankers, merchants. They are not a mob, they are revolutionists asserting a sacred privilege and a right” Tamari, T (2002). The Attackers wanted to overthrow the mayor because he supported the voting rights of African Americans. In the aftermath, more than 2,000 African Americans fled the city, and those who remained were disfranchised. The election riot that year, of whites, killed a dozen blacks and destroyed black political power in that city, Klarman, M. (2004, p. 15). Through time the riots became more violent and shameful.

The riot on September 22, 1906, in Atlanta Georgia, was one of history’s most shameful. Atlanta was one of the southern cities that African American and the Southern Whites lived peacefully. However, a series of events that summer raised tensions in Atlanta. The KKK (Ku Klux Klan) was glorified through a film called the clansman, a race baiting political campaign for governor, and newspaper articles reporting sexual assaults by African American men, all untrue, by white women. Thousands of men and boys lined the streets of Atlanta looking for African Americans. The riots lasted for days before the militia restored order. Officially, 25 blacks and one white died. Unofficially, over 100 may have died. After the riots whites tried to be somewhat conciliatory, winning the praise of Booker T. Washington. But the fact that a riot had occurred in a city that he had described as a model for racial harmony weakened his moral authority, Wormser (2002). The riot that occurred in 1921 was one of history’s most violent.

In Tulsa Oklahoma in May of 1921 an African American man was arrested for the assault of a white women. Other African American men went to guard the prisoner, against a possible lynching. The African Americans was ready to fight for what was right. They were back from fighting for freedom overseas, for others, and now they were ready to fight for their rights and freedom at home. They wanted what the President had promised them, Civil Rights. African Americans talks of the New Negro and how he has fought for democracy abroad and now he is prepared to fight for it at home angered the whites and many were fearful of them He (the New Negro) is not going to coward down anymore but fight back. “Another new negro, home from overseas said, “We were the first American regiment on the Rhine—Colonel Hayward’s, the Fighting Fifteenth; we fought for democracy, and we’re going to keep on fighting for democracy till we get our rights here at home. “The black worm has turned” Hartt (Jan. 15, 1921 pa 4). Tulsa Race Riot One major exception to the calmer racial climate.

The violence that erupted in late May 1921 began when a group of armed African American men tried to prevent a lynching. A White female elevator operator had claimed that an African American man attacked her. There was no lynch mob but a confrontation developed between blacks and whites; shots were fired and some whites were killed. As the news spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of whites rampaged through the black community, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. Some blacks claimed that policemen