Black people were treated as second-class citizens and inferior to their white counterparts, and this resulted in the fight for civil rights for African-Americans and Afro-Cubans in both Cuba and the United States. Although the degree to which black people experienced racial discrimination varied between the two nations due to the fact that compulsory segregation in the United States was more severe than it was in Cuba, racial segregation is still apparent in both. Johnson's ""Freedom, Equality, and segregation"" was written in 1958 at a time in history when the United States and Cuba were facing a crisis in the equality of civil rights. It is during this period that the Supreme Court was being faced by difficult and controversial cases about civil rights because African-Americans believed that they had not been granted their deserved civil rights as other races. It is during this period that many African-Americans stood firmly to fight racial segregation in public places. Africans were not regarded as equal citizens to the whites, and this led to the separation of even public utilities for the two groups (Johnson 150). The document was a recount of what had just happened in the United States and what was going on during the period of the 1950s.
The author wrote the document from a sociological perspective because from the start he stressed that segregation was a social problem enshrined in people’s mind and despite the federal legislation outlawing racial segregation, some states in the South still insisted on using state laws to legalize segregation.
The author kept wondering why they had gone back to the fight to scrub civil rights that African-Americans had fought for a long time to attain them. Just after the Supreme Court had granted a Negro his basic rights as a citizen, the author is concerned because some Southerners were demanding that segregation against African-Americans be reestablished. The author aims at enlightening people about the benefits of desegregation because he poses several questions to the audience on why should a Negro be granted freedom and the impact that equality on the society. He poses a question on the compatibility of segregation, liberty and justice and whether segregation has caused harm or good to the nation. The document first poses questions aimed at triggering the mind of the audience about the controversial subject of civil rights and mostly on the issue of racial segregation. The author targets both the whites, African-Americans and people of the Caribbean. The document addresses the manner in which racial segregation denies black people their rights to freedom and opportunities.
What is interesting about the document
All the information contained in the document is based on the evidence which supports the perspective of the author. For instance, the author talks about JimCrow laws in Southern America as some form of legalizing racial segregation, and he goes on to prove how Jim Crow laws negatively impacted the black people leaving in the south. In an attempt to prove how the Supreme Court compromised in its quest to fight and end racial segregation he explains the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments of the United States Constitution and how the Supreme Court delivered judgment in various cases. He gives an example of Reese vs. the United States case, the Slaughter-House cases, and the United States vs. Cruikshank case in 1876 where the Supreme Court failed to uphold the immunities and privileges accorded to the black people in the constitution (Johnson 154). All these evidence given by the author validates the great work and arguments presented in the document. Therefore, it is interesting that all the arguments are valid and they are not just baseless like some other readings.
The document is even more interesting when the author uses some of the direct quotes from judges that made the various ruling regarding cases of racial segregation. Such information is first hand and proves that the author did the real research and was actually on the ground to get details before coming up with the document. For instance, he refers to a statement made by Justice Halan of Kentucky about the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson to prove that even some of the judges were not happy with some decisions of the Supreme Court (Johnson 154).
The struggle for Civil Rights in the United States resonated with the struggle in Cuba in some aspects. In both countries, authorities were involved in frustrating efforts by Negroes to gain freedom and recognition of their civil rights (Davis 46). Even though the document is not a legal document and does not need to meet any standards to be qualified, the author based all his arguments on supporting evidence which made it a legal document. For instance, the author presents an argument that even though racial segregation was rampant in South America, the North also played a role in propelling the same. He gives an example of whites in the North collaborating with those from the South to protect white supremacy and using African-Americans as votes to propel them to power but ignoring their plight.
Works cited
Johnson, Guy B. "Freedom, Equality, and Segregation." The Review of Politics 20.02 (1958): 147-163.
Davis, Darien J. "Nationalism and civil rights in Cuba: a comparative perspective, 1930-1960." The Journal of Negro History 83.1 (1998): 35-51.doi:10.2307/2668554
