African American Segregation

At the beginning of the 20^th an image like this was very common, with white Americans being seen as the superior citizens to that of the African American community. This idea was promoted by the separation of African Americans on public transport, in schools, in cafes and in restaurants as well as many other places.

This image that I have chosen is a very good example of how extreme the segregation between the two races was, and really shows that African Americans were depicted as second class citizens to white Americans. The fact that African American’s could not even share water from a water fountain with the white American community suggests that they would make the water “dirty” or “unclean” for what was seen at the time as the higher class citizens. Even the different water fountains show how little respect African Americans were shown at this time. The water fountain for white Americans looks much nicer, whilst the one for African Americans is much less substantial and it doesn’t look as nice. This is a very good example of how African Americans were depicted through society at the time, they were given less pay and were given nowhere near the same amount of respect as white American citizens.