Racism in the World
Is racism still a prevalent force in our modern society? Many people in America like to believe that racism is no longer apart of today’s world. They couldn’t be farther from the truth. In the twentieth-century, racism seemed to hit an all-time high around the world. With America trying to cope after the Civil War and Europe facing genocide, discrimination seemed inevitable, but can the problem of racism be solved? When looking back on America’s history after the Civil War, racism is apparent throughout in the form of segregation. Segregation truly started in 1865 with the Reconstruction of the United States, “A period from 1865-1877 immediately following the Civil War in which the federal government set the conditions that would allow the rebellious Southern States back into the Union” (“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”). A Reconstruction Policy was presented to the Congress by President Andrew Johnson but he supported white supremacy in the South and favored pro-Union Sothern political leaders who had aided the confederacy in the war. Southerners, with Johnson’s support, attempted to restore slavery in substance if not in name. One way they tried to do this was with the construction of the Ku Klux Klan. In the beginning, the KKK was a secret fraternity club in Tennessee rather than a terrorist organization. Although, the Klan quickly grew and spread beyond Tennessee to every state in the South. It attracted former Civil War generals and included mayors, judges, sheriffs, as well as common criminals. With all of this terror occurring in the south, the Republican-controlled congress was trying to protect blacks. And so, in1815, in a last-ditch effort to protect what remained of Reconstruction, the Congress “managed to pass a civil rights bill that sought to guarantee freedom of access, regard less of race, to the “full and equal enjoyment” of many public facilities” (The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow). Jumping ahead to 1970, the public is shown how blacks are