Coates

Even after the slavery of African Americans became outlawed, a significant amount of discriminatory policies were set in place to prevent former slaves from experiencing true freedom. Coates articles discussed these policies. She was particularly interested in the life of Clyde Ross, a man who faced injustice and discrimination in the state of Mississippi just because of the pigment of his skin. Ross was born in 1923 and was immediately subjected racist Jim Crow laws, because of these laws thousands of African Americans lost their ability to vote through “trickery of the poll tax and the muscle of the lynch mob” (Coates). The lengths that these white supremacists and racists are not only shocking to look back upon but most of all it’s purely embarrassing. Black people would be met with punishments that could make them lose their lives if they even spoke out about these policies. Coates specifically focuses on the problem that was in Mississippi the state that had, “more black people were lynched in Mississippi than in any other state” (Coates). Ross Clyde was a very intelligent man, and back then education was the only way discriminated black citizens can rise up over whites. However he offered the chance to be enrolled in Rosenwald school, He was unable to attend this school because unlike the white children who had a school bus, Ross had to walk. Ross wished he was able to speak out against the hardships him and his loved ones have gone through. However he was always told to keep quiet in order to not putting his family in harms way. Ross lived an unimaginable hard life, he was treated like dirt while while at the same time he worked to the bone to attempt to escape from it. So he then thought he could earn his country’s respect by fighting in World War II. Eventually many of the new black citizens went north where there were new opportunities for a better life. Our country will look back at this time forever as an embarrassing display of what we called “freedom”.