EOTO #3 Reax.

    In today's class, we were taught the stories of the positives and negatives African Americans faced after the Reconstruction Era. First hearing the negative events and components towards African Americans starting we have the Negro Motorist Green Book. This book was founded in 1936 by Victor Hugo Green and continued to be published until 1966 after the Civil Rights Movement. In this book, the resilience of African Americans was displayed against the discrimination of the Jim Crow Laws. This idea of resilience created a sense of community and security amongst the African Americans of our nation. There was a constant fear of discrimination and prejudice every day of their lives in things as simple as taking road trips for African Americans. 

    This fear was formed from past events such as the next topic discussed, the Wilmington Massacre of 1898. In this massacre, between sixty to three hundred African Americans were killed in what was the only legal overthrow of an American government in our nation's history. Wilmington, North Carolina was a densely African American populated town in which African-Americans had control over its local government. However, a group of white supremacists took action in their displeasure of an African American-controlled government and rioted. This riot drove out African Americans from Wilmington if they were not killed, by the whites destroying their homes and businesses. The actions in Wilmington further led to harsher discrimination of blacks through voter suppression, the Jim Crow Laws being extended, and total disenfranchisement of African Americans. A final topic discussed in the negative times post-Reconstruction for African Americans was the film, The Birth of a Nation. In this film, African Americans are depicted as monsters riddled with crime and violence towards the whites while the Ku Klux Klan were deemed as heroes of our nation. The NAACP filed to ban the film to avoid further discrimination and public hatred toward African Americans. Still, the file was denied and the movie was produced and played nationwide. 

    Now changing to a more positive note for African Americans, the post-reconstruction era also held many positive events for the black population of America. First off, Executive Order 9981 signed by President Harry Truman, in which segregation was banned in the military, was a firm starting point to end segregation in our nation as a whole. During WWII, in which over a million African Americans fought, many black soldiers were treated unfairly and given harsh tasks and most were forced away from combat on the battlefield unless needed. Truman, as a veteran, felt connected with the black veterans of WWII, and in 1948 he signed Executive Order 9981. This left a hole in our nation as the idea that blacks fought for democratic rights in foreign nations but were denied the same rights back in their homeland started to spread across the United States. 

However, African Americans were still on the path to the elimination of segregation with Thurgood Marshall making his way up the ranks in our justice system. Marshall later became a Supreme Court justice where he heard cases such as Brown v. Board, Smith v. Allwright, and many more pivotal cases in our nation's history. Marshall served as a role model to many African Americans so that they too could make something of their lives in prejudiced America and never give up on their dreams even if they were denied equal access and rights.