Psychology of Diversity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Psychology of Diversity - Essay Example Illinois law severely restricted African-Americans rights and liberties. This law demanded that all African-Americans settling in the state to produce a certificate of freedom. Blacks found without certificates were to be advertised in newspapers and hired out for a year. Free blacks could not testify against whites in court. Amidst of all such human right violations, some of the blacks found ways to make their marks in Illinois by acquiring land. The life of black women was doubly burdened by their race and their sex. Free blacks, who purchased their freedom from their masters, began to found new organizations and they joined hands with white abolitionists in the fight against slavery. But even those white abolitionists discriminated them from such activities. The blacks were tortured not only physically but mentally as well by publishing cruel cartoons describing the physical features of the blacks. Despite these considerable handicaps, African-Americans became the most significant Americans by the 1850s. The white American political system, that had so effectively marginalized them found itself quite unable to resolve the question of blacks political, social, and economic standing. The result was Civil War. The actions of President James Buchanan and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Taney to establish white supremacy and were brought immense protests from the blacks, and brought leaders like Abraham Lincoln into action. Lincoln, despite his reservations about the workings of immediate black social equality and other concessions to American societys prevailing racial prejudice, boldly argued that blacks, as much as whites, deserved the Declaration of Independences fundamental freedoms of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness†, which led to the Civil War and catapulted Abraham Lincoln from relative obscurity to the Presidents chair in 1861. (Drew E. VandeCre ek, Ph.D) In this article the author has concentrated more on the slavery existed