Class Discussion Reflection

Throughout this semester, as a class, we have gone through and looked at how slavery has affected our nation and how the after-effects of slavery affected the way African Americans function in America even to this day. Going into this class I had a basic knowledge of American History. I knew basic events like the civil war, and the 13th amendment but this class opened my eyes to the dark reality of American History and the amount of time that it took for African Americans to gain full legal equality, and the progress still to reach full social equality. My eyes were opened to the number of setbacks and pushback the civil rights era received. 

Starting in the early days of America we dove into the argument made by pro-slavery supporters in order to justify the act of slavery. We researched and dove into different arguments made by people from this era. One argument specifically prevalent was the argument justifying slavery through Christianity. Many southerners had their own arguments and opinions but there were people arguing in favor of this. 

We next touched on the State v. Mann case where we see the supreme court ruled that slaveowners could use as much force as possible to punish their slaves because at this time legally the slaves were property. After the civil war ended and the 13th amendment was ratified that was not the end of oppression. We focused heavily on the importance and prevalence of the 14th amendment through the civil rights era. 

The first major 14th amendment case we studied was Plessy v. Furgeson where the ruling "separate but equal" came from. We saw how this ruling affected the lives of African American citizens throughout the country but especially in the south. This was one of the major setbacks in American history. We see the 14th amendment's constitutional restrictions on the states enforcing laws that abridge the privileges and immunities of all people, states taking away fundamental American rights from any citizen without due process of the law, and states are to provide again every citizen with equal protection under the law. 

But Plessy v. Ferguson did exactly the opposite. Essentially segregation became legal in America; for nearly 60 years America functioned like this. Until a 1954 decision made by the supreme court overturned Plessy. This was a big step in the right direction for America. Integration would begin, but history always repeats itself and in this time we see a pattern of behavior from separationists. We see Stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama physically blocking African American students from entering, and the Boston bus riots where objects were thrown at buses full of Black children as just two out of the many examples of racially stemmed violence from this. 

Then in 1964, ten years after the decision of Plessy the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. This act banned discrimination in public accommodations whether they were publically or privately owned. In this time the Klu Klux Klan became prominent throughout America sparking racially motivated violence. We saw how this group terrorized Black citizens making them fearful to go out in society. So, although at this time discrimination was illegal, social groups like this terrorized African Americans, making integration hard. 

In our round table discussion, we touched on different issues like modern 1st amendment cases and the danger of those even going to the supreme court, the idea of modern parties and political supremism, and how different factors affect modern politics, which lead to our last and most passionate discussion about modern racism. I think that it was interesting how this topic was brought up because we studied how far America has come throughout the past two centuries.