Similarly, they passed laws to establish a policy of segregation in society at large.
States could legally force black citizens to live in separate neighborhoods and to use separate telephone booths, restrooms, drinking fountains, cemeteries-and even different Bibles on which to swear in the courtroom. This social situation prevails in Stamps, Arkansas, where Angelou grows up and where a strict color line, marked by the railroad tracks, divides the black from the white parts of town.
Elsewhere in the United States the situation began to change by the mid-1940s, the period in which the autobiography ends. In Hansberry v. Lee (1940) the Supreme Court ruled that blacks could not be restricted from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods. And in Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) the Court ruled that segregation in interstate bus travel was unconstitutional. Yet there was also violent resistance to such change. A riot broke out, for example, after black welders were assigned to work along with white welders in an Alabama shipyard.
The Klan. The powerful far-right group known as the Ku Klux Klan thrived during this era. Although they also harassed, beat, and killed other minorities such as Jews, Catholics, and gay people, the Klan focused most of their violent attentions upon black Americans.
This is a free page. This page contains 192 words. This
article contains 3,326 words (approx. 11 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Access Pass.
