The Road To Equality

Question 1

The road to equality -> Background information

Answer 1

• > Dutch traders bring the first shipment of American slaves to Jamestown (England’s first colony in America)
• > From the onwards slavery is in essential part of the growing farm economy in the south
• > 1776 the Declaration of Independence is adopted “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal” which in fact does not include black slaves
• > slaves continue to count as property
• > The southern states decide to leave the union because it looks like president Aberham Lincoln might try to abolish slavery
• > THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR BEGINS
• > The northern states determined to prevent the break up, march on the south to force them back into the union
• > emancipation proclamation: Lincoln signs the proclamation, officially freeing all slaves
• > the Northern states win the war
• > 1870 the 14th and 15th amendment to the constitution: gives blacks US citizenship, gives all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color or gender

Question 2

NEVERTHELESS

Answer 2

• > African Americans remain the underdog for almost a century
• > the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) continues to attack and Lynch blacks (right wing extremist organization, white supremacy, white nationalism, anti-immigration, public violence against blacks)
• > Lynching (in most cases, a mob of whites hanged a black American from the branch of a tree “Lynch parties”, the victim was sometimes accused of a crime even if he/she was innocent) (*strange fruit)
• > injustice within the law-> many African Americans were convicted for crimes they never committed or severely punished for minor offenses (*Atticus Finch “everyone might not be treated equally but there is one place where that should definitively be the case: the court”)
• > Jim Crow laws in the south kept black People separated from white people