Trey Jones
Thorne, Boloyan
Humanities 11
11/1/12
African Americans: Mistreatment Throughout the Whole Country
African Americans endured some of the worst segregation and disrespect in the world. Until some people such as Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells rose up from the ashes of segregation and fought for African Americans freedom. The beginning of the Abolitionist Movement struck courage into the hearts of African Americans in the United States. The Abolitionist Movement was an expedient breakthrough because of the substantial basis that it set to make African American’s dreams come true.
African Americans all over the United States wanted to gain rights that were equal to those of the whites. This was one of the most arduous goals of the Abolitionist Movement. African Americans are still fighting for equal rights today. Even though there was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this came almost a whole century after the Abolitionist Movement ended. Whites refused to be looked at as equals among African Americans. Many people will say that African Americans are tantamount with Whites, yet African Americans are still mistreated and discriminated to this day. Many abolitionists were intensely punished because of their ability to speak of veracity. In 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed by a mob in Alton, Illinois. Slavery Advocates decimated his presses, set his shop afire, and hauled him through the streets. These acts of abhorrence did not shake the courage inside of African Americans all over the United States. African Americans did not let one tragic event metamorphosize the goals that they set.
The Abolitionist Movement was constructed to achieve emancipation for all slaves in United States and to end the segregation of African Americans. Abolitionists did not always agree. By the early 1830s, Theodore Weld, William Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright had taken up the cause of immediate emancipation. The abundance of events that went on to get emancipation provoked widespread hostile responses from the North and South, exceeding in violent mobs. There was also burnings of mailbags subsuming Abolitionist literature and the passage in the United States House of Representatives of a “gag rule” that banned consideration of antislavery petitions. By 1804, all states north of the Mason and Dixon line had either outright abolished slavery or passed laws for the constant abolition of slavery. But the South was extensively a different story. White slave owners were cantankerous and refused to give up their slaves. During the Abolitionist Movement slaves gradually began to gain emancipation from their owners. Harriet Tubman once said, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” Harriet Tubman dug deep into the meaning of the Abolitionist Movement with this quote. The movement never would have developed if it was not for the dreams of every African American made public. The dreamers of the movement made this even more possible for African Americans to speak deliberately amongst one another.
In December 1833, the Tappans, Garrison, and sixty other delegates of both races and genders met in Philadelphia to actualize the American Anti-Slavery Society, which denounced slavery as a sin that must be abolished immediately, advocatednonviolence, and berated racial prejudice. Their goal was to bring all slaves immediate emancipation without compensation for their owners. One capacious issue was that white slave owners were very obstinate about letting go of their slaves. By 1835, the American Anti-Slavery Society had received momentous moral and financial support from African American communities in the North. They also established hundreds of branches throughout the free states, overwhelming the North with antislavery literature, agents, and petitions coercing that congress end all federal support for slavery. All of these events helped African Americans gain a miniscule amount of emancipation from their owners but not all slaves were extricated from slavery. Frederick Douglass, one of the most respected Abolitionist Leaders, said, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” Frederick Douglass is speaking directly to the apathetic, oblivious, and to the supposed “impervious” people of his time. He believes that nothing will ever develop out of laziness and unwillingness to put forth effort into something you care about. Deriving directly from this quote would be effort that he himself put into making the African Americans issues become known and the pride they take into being “Black”.
The Abolitionist Movement was just the beginning to a very adverse time period for our country. The goals of this movement paved the way for future presidents and leaders of our country to withstand the urge of having slaves once again. We all are equal, and the segregation of races, sex, or religion is never the solution to the hatred of one another. African Americans never deserved to be treated as if they were nothing. The goals and success of the Abolitionist Movement substantiated that African Americans could succor our country into greatness.