Racism in 1880 During the years 1870 through 1900, racism vastly continued across the United States. African Americans and Native Americans were treated brutally by white men; from being pushed off their land and having their homes taken away from them, to make room for white families or workers, to being brutally murdered by soldiers or hate groups. Whites controlled virtually everything including businesses, the railroads, farms, and most of the government. Once the African Americans were freed, many had hopes to become self-sufficient farmers like the white citizens around them. However, this would not become a reality due to the lack of land redistribution. Furthermore, in 1872, the Freedmen’s Bureau were forced to evict thousands of African American families that had settled and created homes on the land that was confiscated from the Confederates. Many former slaves went back to working on farms with a system called sharecropping. Unfortunately, this system was …show more content…
After the Civil War, several whites moved to the American Desert, the land the Natives were promised after being pushed off their homeland. This expansion of white settlers continued due to the Homestead Act of 1862; this gave 160 acres of land to individuals for free as long as they improved the land within five years. The United States government did not see the Natives as Americans, instead viewing them as their own separate nations. The United States and the Native Americans discussed and negotiated treaties through the Senate, treaties that would eventually be broken. In 1864, Colonel Chivington leads soldiers into Sand Creek to murder a peaceful Native tribe called Cheyenne. Native Americans in the great plains were forced to leave their homes. Some tried to flee to Canada, but were caught and forced into reservations. Natives were also weak and did not have enough supplies due to the whites killing all
Sharecropping many freed slaves remained on their plantations and worked as sharecroppers in this arrangement landowners (former
The Chinese also moved out here because they worked on the railroad. In the Great Plains, the bison were wiped out and Indians were forced to relocate. They moved onto reservations with the number of settlers increasing daily. The farmers began to grow wheat and other types of crops.
In 1877 racial tension and hostility was starting to take
There were many wars fought between the Indians and the whites. Many Indians gave up their lives to keep their way of life, but their effort was for nothing (Doc 4 and Doc 6). The whites took their land and then sold it at low prices to those moving to the west, and the Indians that were left had to think about their children and decided to leave (Doc 1). A well-known example of this process was the “Trail of Tears” which was the trail the Cherokee Indians took to their reservation and the trail was many died of illness, starvation or were shot for not keeping up with the group. The final thing
Imagine being forced to leave your home and travel about 1,200 miles on foot to a new place. You probably wouldn 't want to leave to go on a dangerous journey for no reason. Many Native Americans were forced to give up land east of the Mississippi River and migrate to preset day Oklahoma. Nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, And Florida. President Andrew Jackson had over 20,000 Native Americans removed from their homeland.
Native Americans were mistreated, and as a result, they too started to rebel and defend their territory. “Red River War…their mounts and supplies were so depleted that they could not survive the winter on the plains and were forced to enter the reservation” (Comanche Reading 4). The settlers eventually took control of them and forced them to cede their lands, their ancestral lands. The numerous conflicts and wars that Native Americans were involved in also resulted in a decline in their population. Such as the Wounded Knee massacre, site of two conflicts between Native Americans and U.S. representatives.
This act involved soldiers forcing Indians off their land and onto a trail which I will talk about later. These specific groups of Indians were the Choctaw, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, the Cherokee. They made up what white settlers
The native americans had two options. Leave their homes to the west or die (primary source). Some might argue that the whites gave the native Americans two years to leave but the problem was that whites couldn 't except native Americans. The native Americans gave up their culture for the white’s way of living so they wouldn 't be forced to leave (Cherokee nation in the 1820’s).
Racism; “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” Apply this definition to the citizens in the United States in the 1900’s and now, and then compare it. Do you see a difference? I don’t. Back then they were treated poorly as shown in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, “Hidden Figures,” Raisin in the Sun, and several other sources.
After World War 1, the United States was able to move from war to peace in the 1920s . However, with this transition came racism, the red scare, end of progressivism and bumps within the economy. Domestic problems that the United States had to face was the predicament of African Americans, labor unions that had grown in size and influence , the way that living costs had risen, the Red Scare, etc. For instance, with the tansition from war to peace, the United States had to deal with racism. A type of racism was a hate group known as the KKK (Ku Klux Klan).
They were forced to leave their homes to move somewhere they did not know about. Also how badly they were treated and the war against one another unlike the Jews the Native Americans were not put in death camps but they were placed somewhere they had no idea about that area so in rebellion of not accepting this forced change the Native Americans decided to fight back against the Americans to get their ways and land back to the way it was before. During the war against Americans the Native Americans did lose a lot of lived like mother’s, children, men, women, people just in general who had loved one same as the
The treaty the US government signed with the Indians in 1851 granted the Indians to have an extensive territory, which means the Indians can get more land, but eventually that did not last(doc 3,4). One of the most important and well-known wars was the Sand Creek Massacre. On November 29, 1864, John Chivington led 700 troops in an unprovoked attack on the Arapaho and Cheyenne villagers. There they killed over 200 women, children, and older men. US Indian Commissioner admitted that :We have substantially taken possession of the country and deprived the Indians of their accustomed means of support.”
The army then put forts on their land to protect the imigrants. Cowboys came to settle to farm and and raise cattle. The Indians were then forced to settle on reservations for them. The indians were moved to the black hills, which the white were not allowed on. This didn't last long.
Many freed slaves returned to their locales but most often worked for neighboring plantations then for their original owners. A lot of freedmen lacked money to buy land, and equipment to work the land. White southerners most often refused to sell land to blacks as well. Landowners also lacked labor and freemen most often lacked land, and with cash being scarce many freedmen became sharecroppers. Landowners would dived their land into farms and rent them to freedmen for a share of their crop most often half (The Enduring Vison pg.
What is the purpose of racism? In Theorizing Nationalism, Day and Thompson discuss how racism and nationalism are precisely the same. Racism has the ability to help build nationalism, especially in our young country. LeMay and Barkan in U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Laws & Issues talk about how this racism is used during a specific time period, 1880 to 1920, in the United States of America. Both of these articles argue that when the United States was in a time of peril, they used racism as a unifying factor to bring the country together and as a way to put a group of people lower than themselves to bring their status to a higher point in society.