Discrimination

Heather Titus

Discrimination is defined as, treatment or consideration of, or making a

distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or
category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit 1. In
the United States there has been discrimination and prejudice acts towards people
who are different, whether it be race, gender, or sexual orientation, since the 15 th
century when American was first founded.
In high school textbooks, students learn that when Columbus and his men
sailed the ocean blue they brought disease, however the textbooks make it seem
like it was an accident. The truth behind this is that the settlers would give the
natives blankets filled with small pox and other diseases that killed more than 90
percent of natives.2 Now lets fast forwarding to the 1800s when Andrew Jackson
was president of the US, during the first great awakening and what sparked
westward expansion and manifest destiny, where Americans felt that it was their
right to move westward and move to the new territories that were still owned by
Native Americans. Andrew Jackson, a specter that when it last appeared sentenced
tens of thousands of Native Americans to hideous, agonizing deaths. 3 Words of
Albert Bender who is a journalist for the Native American news site called, Indian
Country. Andrew Jackson began the Indian Removal campaign in the beginning of
1830 and brought the Indians to demise with forcibly removing the Cherokee Tribes
land, west of the Mississippi, and moved them to what is now Oklahoma. Many
1 Discrimination . (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/discrimination

2
3 Bender, A. (2010, October 1). Indian Country. Retrieved April 14, 2015, from
http://www.indiancountrynews.com/nfic-columnists/albert-bender/10262-bloodybloody-andrew-jackson-the-exhumation-of-a-monster

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Heather Titus

people died because of the removal and to this day, many Native Americas loath
Jackson and want to remove him from the 20 dollar bill, Long overdue, said
Jeremy Hamilton, Cherokee citizen. It would be fitting to replace him with a
minority figure he decimated. Many of my friends, and myself included, refuse to
carry the current twenty-dollar bill because of his picture. 4 Not only is Andrew
Jackson seen as the President who founded the Democratic Party, he was seen as a
racist that owned more than 100 black slaves, and the man who brought many
Indians to their early graves.
Slavery in America began when the first African slaves were brought to the
North American colony of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, to aid in the production of
crops such as tobacco and cotton. Slavery would continue into the 17 th and 18th
century and became one of the leading factors of the Civil War which went on for a
little more than four years, 1861-65. Slavery was dying in the late 18 th century and
seemed like the growth would cease, until one day, a man named Eli Whitney
invented the cotton gin and slavery become more popular than ever now that the
south could export more cotton to the British for textiles. Once Slavery became
more popular the start of the Abolitionist movement began to rise and more
Northerners and blacks were wanting to abolish slavery in America and set African
slaves free. The movement was led by people like; freed blacks such as Frederick
Douglass and white supporters such as William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the
radical newspaper The Liberator, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who published the
bestselling antislavery novel Uncle Toms Cabin (1852). As slavery became a more
serious topic on whether it should spread to new territories led to many bills and
4 Sacks, L. (2015, April 6). TIME TO VOTE ANDREW JACKSON OFF THE $20: VOTE FOR WILMA
MANKILLER AS REPLACEMENT. In Native News Online. Retrieved April 16, 2015, from
http://nativenewsonline.net/currents/time-to-vote-andrew-jackson-off-the-20-vote-for-wilma-mankilleras-replacement

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Heather Titus

compromises to try and make the people happy but the US government still
couldnt stop the inevitable. Once Abraham Lincoln was elected to be president in
1861, the south began to secede starting with South Carolina and soon six other
southern state, creating the Confederate States of America; soon four more states
followed the secession train after the Civil broke out in 1861. Five days after the
bloody Union victory at Antietam in September 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, and on January 1, 1863, he made it official that slaves
within any State, or designated part of a Statein rebellionshall be then,
thenceforward, and forever free.5 The 13th Amendment, adopted late in 1865,
officially abolished slavery, but freed blacks status in the post-war South remained
precarious; citizenship was granted in the 14 amendment in 1868 and the right to
vote was given in 1870 with the 15th amendment. Even though slavery was done
and over with and the African American slaves were now free to live their lives, it
would not be equal to white people until the early 1960s.
Even though African Americans were free, the truth of the matter is that they
truly werent free. It wasnt until the Civil Rights Movement during 1950 to 1964,
100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, that African Americans got their
true freedom. Jim Crow laws at the local and state levels segregated African
Americans from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, from juries
and legislatures. Then in 1954 the legislation came up with the Separate but
Equal doctrine that made discrimination against people of color stronger. A year
later on December 1, 1955, a women named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat
to a white bus rider, thereby defying a southern custom that required blacks to give
seats toward the front of buses to whites. She was jailed because of her refusal and
5 Lincon, A. (1863, January 1). Emancipation Proclamation. Retrieved April 17, 2015, from
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html

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Heather Titus

started a boycott that lasted more than a year, showing the unity among this
segregated community. Martin Luther King Jr., was the leader of the boycott and one
of the famous people during this time. The boycott movement led to the creation of
a new regional organization, the clergy-led Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) in 1957. As many protests began to become more successful, it
prompted President John F. Kennedy to push for passage of new civil rights
legislation and in 1993 only one of many local protest were able to acquire at least
200,000 participants on August 28. The March on Washington. The same march
where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech and
helped bring an opening of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King was assassinated on
April 4, 1968 yet that did not stop African Americans. If anything, his death made
them stronger and soon, they were able to get what they suffered so hard to
achieve, equal rights. However, this does not mean that racism ended, it is still
around now in the year 2015.
The discrimination and prejudice treatment of a person because of race,
gender, or sexual orientation has been around since the late 1400s when Columbus
sailed to America and began the decline of the Indian population, while
discrimination became more serious when slavery become an issues in the 1800s,
and during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s. Even today, in this
day and age there is still discrimination acts towards people of color and its sad
that even though America has come through so much, peoples minds are still in a
time were not everyone was treated equal and were treated like dirt. During the
2008 election these racial thoughts surfaced when Barack Obama decided to run for
presidency; many people did not want him to become president because of the
color of his skin, even though they would not say it out loud. How come in the year

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Heather Titus

2015 there is still discrimination? Why it that people are still judging others because
they are different? The answer is there is no reason and the acts of discrimination
needs to end.

Discrimination

Heather Titus

Bibliography
Sheen, M. (Narrator). (2008). Andrew Jackson: Good, Evil and The Presi [Online video]. PBS.
Retrieved April 16, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGfxyeuy8u8