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African American Progress to Equality

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Submitted By MsPaulette
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RUNNING HEAD: African-American Progress to Attain Equality and Civil Rights 1

How African-Americans Worked to End Segregation, Discrimination and Isolation to Attain Equality and Civil Rights
Paulette Dorsey
HIS204: American History Since 1865
Instructor: Professor Marisea Stanley
January 21, 2013

African-Americans Progress to Attain Equality and Civil Rights 2
How African-Americans Worked to End Segregation, Discrimination, and Isolation to Attain Equality and Civil Rights Since the period of slavery years, African Americans have gone through a hard period of isolation, discrimination and were segregated on the basis of their skin color. Disfranchisement, legalized segregation, discrimination, and exploitation had become a part of the American way of life. But, through vehicles as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, migrations to the North, several activists including Nat Turner, Fredrick Douglas, Richard Allen, and Booker T. Washington just to name a few, rose from the depths of slavery and the terror of lynching to win an equal place in American democracy.
How African-Americans Worked to End Segregation and Discrimination Segregation is defined as “the practice that divides people in terms of color, religion, and even wealth” (Student Notebook, Webster’s Dictionary). African Americans went through a rough period where segregation laws and practices were in place to encourage racial separation. They were forced to ride in separate railroad cars, have their own hotels and courthouses, and even get water out of their own drinking fountains. Also voting regulations eliminated the political voice of African Americans. The N.A.A.C.P. from 1945 to 1954 attacked legalized segregation and devices for denying blacks the right to vote, bias in transportation and segregation in recreation and educational facilities.

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