How Far Did Life Change for Black Americans Between the 1920s and 1950s?

Between the 1920s and 1950s, black Americans were seen inferior in everyway to everyone else politically, socially and economically. However, through the years, life for black Americans changed in some ways, making their lives better but in other ways made their lives worse. Although some aspects of education were improving for black Americans and segregation was slowly changing between the 1920s and 1950s ,their living conditions, legal rights and wealth did not change dramatically.

Although migration to the north began soon after the civil War ended, the great majority of black Americans still lived in the southern states where white superiority was still enforced and the slavery culture was still embraced. Some states introduced a series of laws to keep the races separated, they were nicknamed the ‘Jim Crow’ laws. In 1963, Martin Luther king described the life of a typical black person growing up in Alabama, describing their facilities and their work after World War two to persuade everyone to change their opinions of black people. The ‘Jim Crow’ laws were to create ‘separate but equal’ treatment but in practice they condemned black citizens to inferior treatment and facilities. Source 2 says, a typical black person was ‘born into a Jim-crow hospital to parents […] lived in a ghetto.’ This shows how separated black people were from the white and shows how bad their facilities were. Other facilities that were also segregated included, ‘colored parks’, eating ‘in a separate place’ and using ‘a water fountain and lavatory labelled colored’. Negros were given a label that followed them around and were treated as if they weren’t human. Discrimination was also common in what work a negro person did, ‘regardless of ‘their’ comparative talents’, they could have been way more talented than a white person but the white employee would have got the ‘promotion’, showing inequality. Source 2 is reasonably reliable as it is from someone who has had first hand experience being a black person however it could be biased.

Segregated facilities in the south are also shown in Source 5, where there is an image of a ‘colored’ drinking fountain. From these pieces of evidence, we can conclude that life for black people, in the aspects of work and facilities, did not change greatly between the 1920s and 1950s. However, Martin Luther king concluded his speech with, ‘ the walk to the ballot box […],’ signifying the beginning of change. This source is reliable as it an image directly taken and therefore is physical evidence.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, there was not much change of black Americans’ living conditions, especially at the start. Source 4 is a newspaper report, that was quoted in J.C. Furnas, ‘How America Lives’ in 1943. This source describes the life of a family with 16 members that lived in a