Safi Syed A2 Mrs. Smith
The Changing Status of African Americans

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true,” (Martin Luther King Jr.) In the early 1900’s several laws segregating black and white races were put into law and force. For instance blacks and whites could not drink out of the same water fountains. Blacks could not sit in the front of the bus; also they could not eat in the same restraint or rooms as whites. The laws also prevented blacks and whites for marrying each other. The blacks and white schools were also segregating both races. During this era many hate groups formed against the African Americans and developed hatred against them as well as the people who helped support them. The hardships African Americans went through in the 1900’s were tremendous and hard, hardly anyone can believe such things happened today but it is all true. Today many of those hardships are erased, but still they remain in our dark history.

If you were in the early 1900’s you would see that a lot of laws were unfair to blacks, including riding in the front of a bus. Many people got sick and tired of these unfair laws and decided to do something about it. They started the most effective way of protesting known to mankind, boycotting. The main objective of this was to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks. During this time period African Americans were forced to sit at the back of the buses, and whites were allowed to sit anywhere. Rosa Parks had just come from a long hard day at her job as a seamstress and sat down at the front. The bus driver was white so naturally he would go with the laws. He asked Mrs. Park to move to the back of the bus, but she didn’t. After a few hours the police were finally called in and they took her to jail. She spent a night in jail before attending court the next day. The final verdict ruled her guilty and she was fined $10 for not listening to the bus driver, and a $4 court fee. This was all it took to spark a boycott of buses. The ending result was that buses became black friendly. In the aftermath the governments lost so much money they agreed with the boycotter’s demands, but still because of the lost money bus fares rose from 12 to 15 cents to accommodate for losses. The main point is to stand up for what you believe in, even if you’re standing alone. In addition to Rosa Parks there were many other people who changed the status of African Americans. In the 1900’s it was considered an act of injustice if an African American went to a white school. However there was a group of students nicknamed the “Little Rock Nine” who were court ordered to attend a previously all white high school. They went through a living torture every day, having to be escorted by troops of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army. White people would surround the whole school forming a crowd to not let the nine children in, many parents withdrew their children from the school entirely. The student’s once inside the school had problems that the outside world could never compare to. For instance one student had acid thrown into her eyes; another example was one student was locked into a girls bathroom stall and was almost burned alive. One little rock nine students had finally had enough of this and threw a bowl of chili onto her prosecutors which resulted in her being suspended for the rest of the school year. The punishments for blacks were accounted for if there was any witness but for a white student they were only accounted for if there was an adult witness along with evidence. This was very common to expect during this era. The point I’m trying to get across is that many people had gone through a lot, and not just African Americans. Many people who helped