Pierre Berton, a famous author once wrote “Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.” This quote illustrates the 1930’s destruction caused by the disease of racism. It relates to the 1930’s events such as the KKK, the Scottsboro trial, and the Jim Crow Laws. Racism never stopped during this time, it kept moving. Therefore, the 1930’s racial discrimination made it a huge struggle for the African Americans in their daily life. For one thing, a criminal group in the 1930’s was defined as a terror group called the KKK. The KKK was a white supremacy-fulfilled organization full of intimidation and violence directed to all black and colored. There name, KKK, strands for the Ku Klux Klan, created by a major leader D.C Stephenson. D.C Stephenson had a hate towards the colored and believed that all whites ruled. He was a state leader of the branch of the Klan. Ku Klux Klan is a Greek word meaning “the circle”. In the 1920’s the Klan exceeded more the 100,000 people for the white supremacy (history.com). They wore white robes with white pointed hats. There transportation to get blacks was in a white metal armored tanks. They came mostly at night and killed about 10-15 people. The white supremacy started because of beliefs that whites were always better and ruled everything so they can destroy everything it wanted. The 1930’s was a rough time in history because of various things such as racial discrimination, the dust bowl, the great depression and more. All schools were split, blacks in one school, and whites in another school, black’s bathroom and then whites bathroom. Everything was separated so they would not come in contact with another. Rosa Parks, the first black women to stand up and sit in the front of the bus where the whites were supposed to sit she said, “I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free … so other people would also be free.” This quote relates to the KKK because they were a group looking for the blacks to be gone, but Rosa Parks was a black who wanted to be free from the whites.
The Scottsboro trial was a trail where nine young black males were falsely accused for raping two white women on a freight train. It was located at Scottsboro, Alabama during 1931. The names of the girls were Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. A man who defended the boys named Samuel Simon Leibowitz was an African Criminal defense attorney (blackpast.org). Within two weeks of the accusing and trial, the boys were convicted, eight sentenced to death, but the youngest one, Leroy Wright was age 13 and he was scented to life imprisonment. These boys were only convicted because they were a different race if they were just nine white men raping two white women this would have never happened and came to court for trial.
The Jim Crow Laws was white protestant churches that taught to whites that God meant blacks to be at the bottom of society and to serve whites as the top of society. The Jim Crow Laws reached its height in the south during the 1920’s. They burned crosses and lynching (and offence with or without a legal trial by killing someone by hanging them (americanhistory.si.edu). The separation of the blacks and the whites made them mad, unhappy and aggravated. The most troubling for the black men was an increased number of white women accusing them of rape. By law, they feared that the race war would break out and harm their children for the violence that would occur.
The KKK targeted only the blacks- they also hated the Jews,Catholics, Liberals etc, but most of the hatred was directed against the poor black families in the South who were very vulnerable to attack and kill.
The 1930's Shows that how the Whites looking the other way from not looking at the Blacks and how separated they were from the hatred.
The Scottsboro Boys, the boys who were accused of raping two white girls. At the time it was a very wrong thing to do and the whites didn't want to have to do anything with the Blacks.