Civil Rights of 1964

Hi!

It's Brooke, checking in for the last blog of United States History to discuss with you the successful outcome of the undeniable unequal treatment of African Americans from the beginning of America. In the beginning, these African Americans were bought or stolen from their masters in Africa, and were sent to these new lands to do harsh, strenuous work for no reward or freedom. Treated unfairly before they even step foot in America, and now it's 1964 and the fight is slowing to an end. The Civil Rights Act in 1964 ended segregation in all public places, meaning no discrimination for a certain race, gender, or religion. This was the turning point in all harsh racist acts. Obviously, many individuals in the South still attempted to protest, but the African Americans had finally won their freedom after years of battling for the difference in their skin color that they can not control. For so long, there was separation of bathrooms, schools, restaurants, and etc. Each different places for different colored people were labeled things such as "Colored Bathroom Only", to depict that only African Americans could use the poorly kept, lower quality bathrooms. It is mind blowing to believe that republican white individuals once truly believed that the African American individual is less of a human than they were. There were two major follow up acts past in continuation of the trend which were the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. The voting rights act prohibited literary tests and all other racist discriminate ways to stop a certain race from voting; whereas, the fair housing act banned discrimination in the sale of property. The African American population has been through many rough patches, but their repetitive battling has led them to reach their goals and have the same equality as the rest of America!

http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act

Have a Great Summer and remember to learn your history!
Signing off,
Brooke van den Berg

Jim Crow

Hello Bloggers!

Currently, my class has been learning about the late 1800's - early 1900's. My subject of study is race, and in this time period, domestic racial inequality is at an all time high. When African Americans were given freedom, Caucasian's lost their minds. They did not approve of African Americans being able to do the same things they were. The result of this was the creation of Jim Crow Laws, which was a nasty racial caste system that whites created with the belief that they are superior to all African American's in all important roles. These laws took place in Southern racist states, and did not venture up into the Northern lands. Northeast American's were much more excepting of the freedom of African Americans. The South did not share mutual feelings. Some whites believed violence should be used to keep blacks at the bottom of racial hierarchy. The KKK was created in this time period to help carry out the violence aspect of Jim Crow Laws. The laws were obnoxiously racist; for example, "Under no circumstances was a black male to offer to light a cigarette of a white woman -- that gesture implied intimacy.", even though this was almost never meant as a sexual gesture. Whites were basically making things up to create the least amount of comfort in an African American's everyday lifestyle. Jim Crow laws, also called black codes, made it very difficult for African American's in public situations. There were separate schools, bathrooms, restaurants, water fountains, and so much more, that were all put in place because African Americans were not supposed to have the same amount of equality as whites. It was publicized everywhere that these two races were not allowed to do participate in the same opportunities as whites; for example, there were signs on every segregate place or object that required blacks to not be involved. So, there were a lot of signs. This was a very low time in Southern African American's lives, but they did everything they could to survive and follow the "rules" placed before them. I extremely respect every soul that had to go through this time period as a black individual, and there will never be this drastic divide racial environment again in America. 

Thank you for your time, 
        Brooke van den Berg 

You can find more information about this tragic time period at this site. 

Hello Bloggers!

        Today I am going to be talking about race relating to the Antebellum period. Specifically, I am going to be talking about the relocation of American Indians in 1830, which is commonly known as the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act was signed by Andrew Jackson, and it gave the federal government the power to force the American Indians that lived east of the Mississippi, to move to the west of it. A product of this act was the Trail Of Tears, which was the journey to relocation they had to make. More than 4,000 Cherokee Indians passed away, and more than double that harshly suffered. American Indians died of cold, disease, and hunger on their way to their new home. The targeted tribes that they wanted to remove were Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw Native Indians. The American Indian's weren't allowed to gather their belongings before they left, and it resulted in whites raiding their homes and stealing their items. It is pitiful how unfair, racist, and morally incorrect the Indian Removal Act was.  But the Act was urged by Jackson because when he was in the military he had fought and won against the Creek Indians, making him hate the race. It tremendously helped the white farmer community because it gave them more opportunity and land to grow crops on; for example, cotton and fruit. In 1828, there was a large amount of gold discovered in Georgia, to my belief, this discovery was probably a motivator for removing the American Indians as quickly as possible, so that the greedy white population could attack and conquer those new opportunities for money. The Removal Act permanently damaged the Indian population in the United States. We will always remember the Trail of Tears as a harsh, racist act of destruction, and I believe nothing in American history will ever resemble this horror again.

I found the following information on this link.

Best Regards,
     Brooke van den Berg

Founding Of America

Hello fellow Americans,

Today we are learning about the founding of America in correspondence with the freedom of African Americans, which also happened in the mid/late 1800's. African Americans started to form the idea that they had certain rights before the civil war. When the North promised slaves freedom if they thought in the civil war for them, it caused an uproar in the south and thousands of African Americans immediately fled. The Declaration of Independence influenced the decision of Vermont to abolish slavery, the same year the document was published. After more states started acting on the freeing on slaves, the northern freed African Americans started developing their lives as normal, civil humans; this is unlike anything they had seen before. Once the Emancipation Proclamation was a enacted, all slaves had free reign to do whatever they may please. This was shocking to the southern states who had never known a life that had free black people in it. It caused many conflicts. The Ku Klux Klan and other associations were constant threats to the safety of black Americans. Although it was hard to live in the segregated life style the Southerns had put forth,  it did not stay African Americans from building education systems and extending their knowledge to useful topics. The freeing of African American slaves is one of the greatest historical moments to ever occur in America. This is the turning point of all racial separation. Racism is not over because of this movement, and it never will be, but after slavery is abolished, life in America is never the same. If you would like to read more about this topic, you can visit this site.

Talk to you next time! Hope you enjoyed this post.

Over & Out,
Brooke van den Berg

     Hello, 

                Race tension and discrimination between whites and African Americans was not in colonial America at the start. The colonists initially relied on indentured servants and enslaved American Indians to do the manual labor required to sustain. This slowly began to change as indentured servitude began to fall out of favor after the Bacon rebellion, outlawing most indentured servitude. In search of source of labor, the colonists began tapping into the already present slave trade in West Africa. The colonists began shipping these slaves over to the Americas in the thousands. Even when these Africans slaves first arrived there were treated with respect and had some rights, but as time went on and the slaves became more and more valuable they lost their rights. Colonists no longer saw the slaves as people anymore, but saw them as a commodity. The colonists began passing laws that secured their power of the slaves, and in turn stripped them of things that made them human. This is truly when race discrimination of the African Americans started, as the colonists stripped them of their rights and used them for profit.


Article used http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-03.htm

First Blog: Racial War

Hello,

Welcome to my blog! My name is Brooke van den Berg and I am enrolled in Mr. Harding's United States History class at Potomac Falls High School. The theme I have chosen to blog about this year is race. I chose this because race difference is a large conflict in the USA currently. We have been recently having a small, but growing, racial war in America concerning the two groups of individuals that are white police men, and African Americans. I chose this article to demonstrate that there is going to be a much larger problem that we can not control if we don't fix the racism conflict. Most African Americans believe that they are treated more poorly than the average white-American. One belief the rebels try to convince themselves of is that there are harsher penalties given to black people for the selling of cocaine because more African Americans sell crack cocaine than powdered cocaine, and the consequences are higher for those selling crack cocaine. This is absurd because the people who pushed for the penalties to rise were of their ethnicity. Charlie Rangel, an African American congressman in the 1980's, supported the thought to make the consequences of selling this drug more severe. I agree with this article because it is explaining that we need to end this race war and be more mature and less irrational when trying to come to a mean of agreement of what needs to be changed to compromise and make everyone a little happier.