Racial Injustice and Activists Essay Example

📌Category: Historical Figures, History, Racism, Social Issues
📌Words: 561
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 09 February 2022

African Americans experienced a great deal of racial injustice, inequality, and segregation during the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Along with this, African Americans were subjected to a great deal of violence, with lynching being one of the most prevalent issues of the time. Activists like Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Homer Plessy fought to combat the injustices that African Americans endured during this time.

Ida B. Wells, an investigative journalist during the Gilded Age, was a notable activist who used journalism to call attention to the lynchings that were taking place at the time. Ida was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Wells was directly impacted by the matter of lynching. Wells was friends with a couple of successful black business owners who were subsequently lynched. Because white competitors saw her friend's grocery store as a threat, they lynched her friends to destroy the competition. Wells became apprehensive after the lynchings of her friends. She set out to look into various cases of black males being lynched. While using the alias “Iola”, Wells wrote many sections for the local newspaper and published her discoveries in a pamphlet. In addition to this, Wells was also one of the founders of the NAACP, an organization dedicated to the National Association of Advancement for Colored People that formed in 1909. 

During this particular era, racial segregation was incredibly common. In practically all public areas, segregation was enforced. To name a few, train carts, restaurants, water fountains, hospitals, and schools were places where segregation laws were implemented. A particular incident that occurred on June 7, 1892, which revolved around segregation, resulted in a man by the name of Homer Plessy being arrested for sitting in the “White” car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy had advocated for equality by taking this case to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy, declaring that segregation was technically legal as long as it was equal. Essentially, separate but equal. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court did not immediately prohibit segregation, Plessy's case was used as a precedent in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Supreme Court declared segregation in schools and other public facilities unlawful in 1954.

Two other notable activists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era were W.E.B DuBois and Booker T. Washington. Both of these men held opposing viewpoints on the approach that should be taken to attain equality. DuBois claimed that rapid action in the areas of political and civil rights was imperative. Only the most intellectual African Americans, he believed, could lead their people in that direction. DuBois was also one of the NAACP's founders. The NAACP used the legal system to combat segregation, racism, and maltreatment of African-Americans. In 1915, they made the Grandfather Clause illegal, and in 1954, they abolished legal segregation. In 1856, Booker T. Washington was born into slavery. Washington, on the other hand, was a great believer in gradualism in order to achieve any progress. Instead, he aimed at teaching students to put aside their urge for immediate political and civil rights and rather focus on economics and vocational skills. Tuskegee Institute, which he founded in 1881, was where he conducted this. Washington was generally unconcerned about segregation.

To summarize, through her journalism, Ida B. Wells enlightened many Americans about the atrocities involving African Americans, Homer Plessy and his case contributed to future change, and W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington had two opposing viewpoints on how to approach reform. All of these activists, however, had one thing in common: they all battled for and attempted to bring about change for African Americans.

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