Scholarly Commons

“Legal Activism: The Early Civil Rights Movement in Southeast Pennsylvania, 1809s-1940s"

Each culture and “race” has different was to determine their identity. For many cultures and races their identity is formed in traditions, religion and the socio-economic practices they grew up in. For African Americans, this is far from true. The African American communities have been plagued with a series of trials and questions on what their identity is. During the times of slavery, they were dehumanized and not even seen as anything other than a means of production. By the Post-Civil war and Reconstruction Era those in power allowed for a legal form of alienation and slavery by enforcing the Black Codes followed by Jim Crow laws finally broken by the Civil Rights Acts. Through time African Americans identity has relied heavily on their “legal status”. In this paper, I am focused on the Southeastern Region of Pennsylvania, focusing on the key players and local cases affecting African-Americans.