American HistoryEssay Preview: American HistoryReport this essayAfrican-Americans have worked extremely hard in order to end segregation, discrimination, and to attain equality and civil rights, which nowadays may be hard to believe, but in the late 1800s and early 1900s African-Americans were discriminated, segregated and “owned.” Even worse, they would often see and hear things like “whites only” and “refusal of service” because of where they ate, drank and lived.
Segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home. This was the normal day in the life of an African-American, having someone tell them where they can and cannot eat, drink, entertain themselves or even where to live. Imagine that someone tells you, you cannot buy this house because you need to live in a lesser, run-down area because of the color of your skin. This is exactly how African-Americans lived during these times. According to Bowles, 2012, slavery began the civil war which led to further violence which in turn led to segregation. But just because this was the end of slavery, does not mean that the military leaders nor politicians can change the ingrained cultural beliefs of a people. The country was split between the North and the South; Northern white and in the Southern Blacks. African-Americans such as Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and even more recent Barrack Obama have made significant steps to improve and even stop segregation. According to Bowles, 2011, American History 1865 to present End of Isolation, The Black Codes codified some of these feelings into law when in 1865 southern state governments created legislation that restricted and controlled the lives of the ex-slaves. These differed among states, but the Black Codes all shared some general provisions. African Americans could marry, but they outlawed intermarriage between the races. State governments prohibited African Americans from carrying guns, and they could not engage in work other than farming. Some of the codes restricted their travel. The most devastating aspect was the vagrancy clause, stating that if a freed slave did not perform work in accordance with these laws, they could be put in jail or “loaned” out for enforced work, which was another term for slavery. So, the white people who were decedents of slave owners thought they were above the African-Americans and they looked down on them. So, segregation was something that was an everyday occurrence which has lessened significantly because of African-American leaders. Segregation was not the only issue that African-Americans were facing, discrimination was another issue that faced nearly all of African-Americans.
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group; which began during and even after Andrew Johnsons presidency. The Constitutional amendment became the primary vehicle for changing toward a more equal nation. In simplest terms, an amendment is a formal process that adds to, or takes something away from the U.S. Constitution. While the Constitution itself established a democratic system of government, because of the necessity of compromise, it left several important issues vague or undefined. Examples included voting rights and citizenship, and the founders passed this to the states to decide. According to Bowles, 2011, American History 1865 to present End of Isolation, though slavery was the underlying reason for the war,
The Founders’ War Was an Unconstitutional Exclusion
The original First Amendment prohibited “racial discrimination”; it provided for a government to suppress, or at least deny to, its citizens. As Bowles, 2007, remarks,
For 1855, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional ban on racial discrimination in U.S. public schools was unconstitutional and that in addition to its restrictions on government, the ban did not extend to federal and state institutions as well, nor did it impose the government’s control over private school teachers over others. [1]
But during the first part of the First Amendment discussion in the 1858 constitution, Congress passed an anti-monopoly law that became quite controversial but was in effect passed.Â
The Constitution of the United States, which was ratified in 1787, specifically established the “fair and equal pursuit of all human endeavors and religious opinions in the said public schools.” This legislation prohibited a federal government from excluding a group based solely, or at all, on the basis of “race” or any other factor. This provision also gave the federal government the right to discriminate against individual non-U.S. citizens.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1868 that the ban unconstitutional because it did not apply to private school teachers, which included not only students from other states, but also teachers with a non-U.S. citizenship. [2]
In 1868, Thomas Jefferson, then presiding over the U.S. Supreme Court, made several rulings that ultimately led to a decision that the “Fair and Equal Treatment” clause of the U.S. Constitution was unconstitutional—allowing Congress to strip the U.S. government of its constitutional authority to place school districts in state and federal control. This included the ban on federal law enforcement (including the IRS), but only one state has ever had such a policy.
While the U.S. Constitution also gave people the right to vote, Congress has had a hard time passing legislative legislation that allows a private school student to vote.Â
After the Constitutional Convention failed and the Constitutional Amendments were adopted, the U.S. moved to allow states to ban the use of firearms in school, especially if a student’s gun was a restricted weapon.
In May 2010, The Daily Beast reported that the National Governors Association and several local leaders were calling for gun control and that the federal government was considering banning firearms in the school-free zones.
In late January, The New York Times published the first comprehensive fact-finding report into the National Governors’ Association’s study on the NRA and the Second Amendment which stated that the organization has been misrepresenting its findings as if it were impartial. The GAA’s 2013 Fact-Finding Report concluded that no one affiliated with the NRA would support a ban on school-free zones.
The GAA then released two new findings from the GAA report:
* In April 2014, the GAA sent a letter to the Federal Register requesting that “public officials, in addition to requiring public schools to adopt an ‘as long as practicable’ policy prohibiting handguns or other firearms” in school closings, and the GAA’s second and third findings submitted the same April 14, 2014 letter.
The GAA did not reply to calls for a clarification of its February 2009 findings but it nonetheless did present an updated report on October 3, 2014 by its executive director on public school closings.
The GAA also released a second GAA summary of its 2014 report that described the GAA’s 2014 study as “biased,” and added to its original July 28, 2014, position “The NRA opposes legislation restricting the purchase of certain personal firearms by states or counties regardless of the constitutional right of citizens to carry the weapons, including school guns, at home in certain places