The effects of racial prejudice and segregation aimed at African Americans in the south on their lives and opportunities were deep-seeded and long lasting. The effects of segregation were perhaps the most destructive because they were legal and above-board. These laws illustrated to the African American population that their struggle was not limited to battling the backward notions and violent actions of cowardly southern rednecks, but that they had to overcome the mentality and ideology of a national government and, in fact, an entire society, that was failing to recognize them as citizens worthy of the basic rights and freedoms to which they were entitled as Americans.Proper and equal education was probably the opportunity that was most blatantly infringed upon by segregation. This probably also dealt one of the most devastating blows to the Movement, simply because it occurred on such a fundamental level in such a critical stage. Young minds were taught at an early and impressionable age to accept unquestioningly separation and inequality between themselves and their white counterparts. The employment of primarily Uncle Tom principles and teachers was intended to insure that ideas of freedom and equality did not make their way into the classroom.Education was only one of the many opportunities that blacks were not afforded because of white prejudice. Even after African Americans gained the right to vote, most were still kept from the polls through the use of threats, violence, and unfair polling and testing procedures and policies. This had the crippling effect of denying African Americans a voice in their future and that of their country. It further alienated them from society and made them feel, at best, like second-class citizens, at worst, like prisoners at the mercy of a cruel and inhumane mob.Other opportunities denied to blacks had an overwhelming and usually negative effect on their ability to make a living and supp...
