Black Segregation

After the abolition of slavery in the United States and after that the Congress passed three Constitutional amendments to grant the freedom of the African Americans (13^th, 14^th and 15^th), the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that nullified the work of Congress during Reconstruction. Regarded by many as second-class citizens, blacks were separated from whites by law and by private action in transportation, public accommodations, recreational facilities, prisons, armed forces, and schools in both Northern and Southern states. In 1896 the Supreme Court approved the H.A. Plessy v. J.H. Ferguson decision, which doctrine was “Separate but Equal” that claimed not violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment.

Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-segregation.html

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

Even if the African American people won the battle against the “black codes” in the Southern States helped by the Republican Party, now they were faced to a new problem… the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction. Its members, a group formed by many Confederate veterans, acted as a campaign of intimidation and violence against white and black Republican leaders. Its leader was Nathan Bedford Forrest a Confederate general, the first leader, called the “Grand Wizard” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses. They were joined by similar organizations such as the Knights of the White Camelia (from Louisiana) and the White Brotherhood. When the Congress passed a legislation in order to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal, to re-establish the white supremacy. Little by little, black legislators elected during the 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became victims of violence during Reconstruction, even seven of them were killed. Quickly, black institutions such as schools and churches, symbols of black autonomy, were also targets for Klan attacks.

Their attacks were mainly at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in where blacks were a minority. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871, 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners.

As everybody feared the terrorist group (nobody wanted to testify against them), the Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871

.

For the first time, the act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (summons with the force of a court order) and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. This expansion of federal authority alarmed many Republicans and by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

In 1915, reappeared the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, formed by white Protestant nativists. However, this second generation of the Klan was not only anti-black but also against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labour. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. By 1920, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

The cases of Klan in relation to violence became more isolated in the decades to come. However, the group was fragmented and became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan

Were African American free after the Civil War in the Southern States?

The Union victory in the Civil War gave slaves their freedom. However, African Americans faced a new obstacles and injustices during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877). By late 1865, when the 13th Amendment officially was passed, the question of freed blacks’ status in the South was still very much unresolved. Under the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states (1865-1866). They stablished a series of restrictive laws known as “black codes,” which were a set of laws adopted by Southern states after the Civil War, which were against the fact that of giving equal rights to black people: these laws refused them the right to vote, black people could not serve on juries and give evidence in court against the white men, they were not allowed to buy or rent farm land, or they were forced to work for one employer for a whole year and could be imprisoned if they refused.

The restrictive nature of the codes led to the discontented of the African Americans, who argued that the codes violated the fundamental principles of free labour ideology. After passing the Civil Rights Act, Republicans in Congress took full control of Reconstruction. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment–which granted “equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves, before they could rejoin the Union. The 15th Amendment, adopted in 1870, guaranteed federal citizen’s right to black people. During this period of Radical Reconstruction (1867-1877), blacks won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress.

Source: http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-codes 

The Butler

The evolution of the Black American people life in US 

Through this brilliant movie we can observe the evolution of the United States of America history in the last sixty years. The film shows the most important events of the American policy, the presidents of the USA and the most significant changes from a traditional society to the current country.

The Butler narrates the life of Cecil Gaines. He was a farmer’s son who grew up in the twenties as a domestic servant for a white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually motivated on his own, Cecil Gaines converts a hotel servant of such competence and good sense that in the fifties he come to be a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil will assist several US Presidents over the years as a reflexive observer of the develop of the American Civil Rights Movement achieving force even as his family has difficulties of its own.

As White House servant, “The Butler” known eight presidents, the progress of the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other main occurrences of the American society.

Whether The Butler treat about policy, White House or the progress of civil rights movement, the plot of The Help is primarily quotidian.

Mississippi, through the sixties, Skeeter is a southern class girl who retakes the college secure to came to be a writer, but changes her friends' lives and her Mississippi town.

When she chooses to  write about the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. First of all, the black women doubt about narrate all of this but little by little they begin to collaborate and soon more women go to tell their memoirs and as it conclude, they have a great deal to tell.

Along the story, questionable amities are fictitious and a new relationship begins, but not previously everybody in town has something to tell themselves when they came without intention and reluctantly reached in the fluctuating times.