The Shifting Actions of a Rising Government essays

The Shifting Actions of a Rising Government essays During the late 1880s and early 1900s many struggling groups of people went to the government to gain support on improving their economic or social status. It was federal or judicial actions that either stood in the way of progress or helped to make the progress that these groups of people believed that they deserved. This is the case with both the African Americans and the workers of the time. Both of these groups were being detained from the goals that they strived for or given help from the government and its laws. Although the Civil War had been over for many years, African Americans still seemed to be suffering from the discrimination they received. However, there were many African Americans who stood up for their culture and strived to change things. After the Civil War, white southerners were back in the political seat, and daily discrimination towards blacks grew largely. Separation between blacks and whites developed during the 1890s into systematic state-level legal codes of segregation. These laws soon became known as the Jim Crow laws. In 1896 the Supreme Court validated the South's segregationist social order in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. This case ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional under the 14th Amendment, which stated, "equal protection." However, in reality there was no equal part to the segregation of blacks and whites. One place they were separated unequally was in schools. With most of the African American population in the South and ma ny being illiterate, the education of black children suffered greatly. The federal government seemed to want to do nothing about this situation and a man by the name of Booker T. Washington helped to promote African American education in the South. Another man, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois had a great deal of influence on the political issue of black-white equality. He demanded that blacks have complete equalityboth socially and economically. ...