American History Assignment: Jim Crow, Natives Land Act, Unions

This assignment delves into a comparative analysis of American and South African history, examining key issues of citizenship, segregation, and labor movements. The student addresses the impact of the Fourteenth Amendment and the rise of Jim Crow laws on African Americans' struggle for citizenship in the United States. It further explores the Natives Land Act of 1913 in South Africa, analyzing its effects on land ownership and the resulting protests. The assignment also examines the formation of trade unions in both countries, highlighting the exclusion of black workers and the subsequent rise of separate labor organizations. References to course readings are included, providing a comprehensive overview of historical events and their impact on social and political landscapes.

Running head: AMERICAN HISTORY
AMERICAN HISTORY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1AMERICAN HISTORY
Section 1:
Question 3:
The amendment XIV in the Constitution of that took place in the year 1869, finally has
given full citizenship to the black men and they were also promised to be provided with equal
protection under the law. This led the Blacks to vote, to win the elected office and also to get
served on juries. However, after a time span of 10 years, it was seen that the federal troops
pulled out from the South thus returning to the usual white rule. As a result, the Republican
Party which was the Reconstruction’s champion and the rights of the freedmen had fallen
from the grasp of national power (Kachun, 2006).
The rights of the black people seemed to be in perils and over the next 20 years, it was
seen that indeed the blacks would almost lose everything that they attained over the past
years. What was worse is that the disavowal of their rights and their freedoms were made
lawful under a series of racist decrees known as the Jim Crow Laws (Chiles, 2020). “Jim
Crow” was a specific term derived only to address the black men. The meaning of this term
went through an evolution and finally it meant any law of the state passed in the South which
established diverse rules for blacks and the whites.
The 19th century was a period in the legal and political standing of the African
Americans that went through a radical transformation. The Blacks were liberated from the
clutches of slavery and they began to relish their rights as citizens themselves. The notion of
citizenship in America during the 1900s was a complicated experience and there were
multiple factors that contributed in such complication of the matter (McMillen, 1989). Firstly,
the United States was emerged out of a colonial revolution against a country that was
considered to be its mother country (Kelley, 1993). This was of Independence led to the
creation of American state and American nation simultaneously.

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This new nation inherited experiences and legacies from its own and thus constructed
the new nation on the basis of slavery, political and social hierarchy which were in turn based
on race, religious beliefs and more; basically, it was based on laws under Jim Crow. The
African- American resistance to this kind of racism flourished in the forms of protests. These
laws mandated the segregation not only racially but residentially as well. To end this legal
segregation, a movement known as the Massive Resistance was created. It was finally that the
African American stood up for their rights and one of the basic rights was to be able to live in
their choice of a land without being discriminated under Jim Crow laws. The Massive
Resistance was not the only protest that went around to end this segregation in terms of
citizenship; all across the land, there were various kinds of protests going on by the African
Americans to have them treated as humans and not some segregated creature with segregated
educational institution, residential place and more.

3AMERICAN HISTORY
Section 2:
Question 2:
The Natives Land Act (1913) was aimed to pass for allocation of about 7 percent of the
arable lands to the Africans and the left portion of the land that was more fertile, to the white
people. This law visibly incorporated segregation on a territorial basis into the legislation and
that too for the first time since the occurring of Union in 1910 (Hall, 2014). The law created
reservation for the black people and also prohibited any kind of sale of territory in the areas
reserved for white to the Black people, or vice versa. This Act also demanded that the Black
People could live on the outskirts of the reserve but on the condition that they could provide
proof of their employment. Despite the fact that the law was valid all across the land of South
Africa, yet it was only applied to Natal and Transvaal.
In Parliament, there were a lot of debates going on around regarding the reason for
which this act was passed and apparently it was explained that the reason behind passing this
act is to limit the conflicts existing between the Black people and the White people. However,
Black people were adamant about their point of view about the real intention behind this act;
the aim of the act was to meet the demands that were being received from the white farmers
for acquiring more agronomic land and force the Black people to continue to work as laborer
as they used to do before.
As a result of the Native Land Act, the Africans were denied their admission to land
which belonged to them or had been letting from the white people. This denial led them to
seek new land in different provinces. The act very brutally seized the one and only asset of
the Africans that centered their lives and provided them destitute (Beinart & Delius, 2014).
The competition between the Black and the White farmers was also decreased in terms of
buying of lands and the act also limited the independence of the Black farmers that they
possessed over white-owned land. Yet the poor farmers fought to hold onto their own land

4AMERICAN HISTORY
regardless of its size. Thus, it was visible how profound the effect of the Natives Land Act
was on the lives of these farmers, both the White and the Black. The position of these farmers
was seen to weaken further when the government issued low- interest loans to the farmers of
the White origin, in order to make improvements in their farm land and also enabled them to
buy agricultural machinery. On the other hand, the Black farmers did not have any such aid
from the government thus making it increasingly problematic for them to compete with the
white farmers.
Such discrimination flashed a violent protest by the Black African people. The SANNC
or the ‘South African Native National Congress’ published an article named “Wrong Policy”
in the newspaper Ilanga Lase Natal whilst the act was still a bill in the parliament (Walker,
2014). This evoked many criticisms for the act and thus the African leaders continued to
criticize in newspapers; eventually protest meetings were started to be organized in diverse
parts of the country. There were endeavors to alter this Act by complaining against it directly
to the British Government, but there was no intervention and the act was not reversed. This
whole incident showed the Black people about the future of the policies regarding the
segregation and how they would have to resist them in order to have what truly belongs to
them.

5AMERICAN HISTORY
Section 3:
Question 3:
American Trade Union formation amplified during the early period of Reconstruction.
Both the Black and the White workers shared a mutual interest in this organization; yet the
trade unions which were mostly organized by the white people, tended to exclude the Black
community, black workers from its benefits. This led the black people to organize their own
labor unions (Marx 1997).
For instance, the creation of Colored National Labor Union in the year 1969 by the
black people, worked as a match to the National Labor Union. This union sent a direct
petition to the Congress that requested direct interference in the improvement of the situation
of the black workers residing in the Southern States.
The petition that was sent by the Colored National Labor Union directly to the
Congress, it was noticed that the Congress showed negligible interest. Instead after a term of
five years, when the period of Reconstruction ended with arrival of President Hayes, the rules
of “Jim Crow” and “Redeemer Rule” were initiated that deepened the grounds of racial
discrimination and maintained a racial division between the lands of United States and South
Africa.
In the year 1935, the CIO or the Congress of Industrial Organizations sought to
organize the workers of the industries without the discrimination on the basis of race, or their
ethnic background (Omi & Winant, 2014). This contributed to an improvement in lessening
the historical conflict between the Trade Unions and the African Americans.
The charges of attempting racial discrimination from the labor unions go back from the
initial days of the foundation of American Federation of Labor in 1886. There has been very
little success in the efforts of both organized labor movements and the Black people, in order
to reach on a common ground on certain civil rights.

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At a certain degree it can be said that the discrimination attempted by the unions and the
labor movements are simple reflection of the religious and racial prejudices present within
the mindset of the members of those unions. There were already a lot of conflict going on
between United States and South Africa and the organized labor movements that promised
comfort and support to the workers across the land, exacerbated this conflict by completely
excluding the black people out of their notice (Chun & Williams, 2013). It is due to some of
these unions that helped in the maintenance of a racial division between these two lands
instead of resolving the issue.

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References:
Kelley, R. D. (1993). " We are not what we seem": Rethinking black working-class
opposition in the jim crow south. The Journal of American History, 75-112.
McMillen, N. R. (1989). Dark journey: Black Mississippians in the age of Jim Crow.
University of Illinois Press.
Chiles, M. (2020). “Down Where the South Begins”: Black Richmond Activism before the
Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1899–1930. The Journal of African American
History, 105(1), 56-82.
Kachun, M. (2006). Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American
Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915. Univ of Massachusetts Press.
Walker, C. (2014). Critical Reflections on South Africa's 1913 Natives Land Act and its
Legacies: Introduction. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40(4), 655-665.
Hall, R. (2014). The legacies of the Natives Land Act of 1913. Scriptura: International
Journal of Bible, Religion and Theology in Southern Africa, 113(1), 1-13.
Beinart, W., & Delius, P. (2014). The historical context and legacy of the Natives Land Act
of 1913. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40(4), 667-688.
Marx, A. W. (1997). Making race and nation: A comparison of South Africa, the United
States, and Brazil. Cambridge University Press.
Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States. Routledge.
Chun, J. J., & Williams, M. (2013). Labour as a democratizing force?: Lessons from South
Africa and beyond. Rethinking Development and Inequality, 2(Special issue), 2-9.