Fight for Equality essays

Fight for Equality essays The nineteenth century faced an abundance of hardships as well as triumphs and discoveries. The most significant issue faced during this time was the African Americans struggle to be equal. Equality was on every black man and womans mind during the nineteenth century and keeping them from being a success was on every white mans mind. Though it was a struggle, many black men and women stood up for what they believed in and made it happen. It is these determined black men and women that are responsible for opening Americas mind to accept people, no matter of race. There is no doubt that no other issue during the nineteenth century has had a more significant impact on the twentieth century and all centuries to come. African Americans were known as the working class. This is because blacks were only allowed to be farmers and work on plantations owned by white men. They worked the land and white men prospered from it giving the African Americans only pennies to live on each day (Straker 26). The white man would do anything to [keep] a Negro down (Straker 26). Not only were they given poor wages for hard work and poor rations to live off of, but they were also told they could not own land. The blacks began to educate themselves the best they could and the white man began to notice the success of African Americans and took away what the Fifteenth Amendment gave the black community; the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment made it illegal to deny blacks the vote but racists found ways around the amendment by creating poll taxes which they knew blacks could not pay and literary tests which they knew most blacks would not pass (Tindall and Shi 616). States began developing plans of their own to keep blacks from voting. In Mississippi the Mississippi Plan was developed which stated that voters must live in the state for two years and in the voting district for one year. They were not a...