Print
Email
Look It Up
AT A GLANCE
Discrimination
2 articles on Discrimination
Discrimination
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 6657 Includes: Rising Free Black Presence | Restriction of Activities | Perceptions of African Americans | Limited Opportunity | Discrimination in Education | Segregation, Congress, and the Courts | Economic Self-Determination | Bibliography | Bibliography[This entry contains two subentries dealing with discrimination against African Americans from the early seventeenth century through 1895. The first article discusses the evolution of federal laws and abusive perceptions that disenfranchised African Americans to 1830, while the second article discusses the development of separate institutions and organizations through which African Americans fought discrimination.] Discrimination by whites against African Americans began during the earliest periods of settlement in America. In Virginia in the 1620s the earliest blacks were regarded as indentured servants, but their names appeared at the end of passenger lists, and most did not have a last, or English, name. Before slavery was codified in the 1660s, punishments were harsher for blacks: when seven servants ran away, for example, the ...
Read full articleDiscrimination
Source: The Oxford Companion to American Law
Word Count: 2674The United States Constitution has become an important source of protection against discrimination, but those protections primarily stem from the amendments, not from the original text of the Constitution. As the American colonies were on the verge of independence, discrimination was on the minds of some observers. Abigail Adams corresponded with her husband, John, while he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776. “In the new Code of Laws,” she urged, “I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” Married women’s legal status in eighteenth-century America was defined by the law of coverture. Their entire legal identity was subsumed under that of their husbands, so that married women could not enter contractsorproperty ...
Read full article