The novel is staged during the Pre-Civil Rights Movement, the gap between the end of the Civil

War in 1865 and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement (1955). Even after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed ,which marked the end of bondage, African Americans still experienced segregation, race-inspired violence, and oppression. This resentment ignited the Pre-Civil Rights Movement, characterized by the African Americans flamboyant determination to claim their rights. As previously mentioned the Pre-Civil Rights Movement was characterized by segregation, oppression, and slaveinspired violence. In March 30 1870, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Southern States took the forefront in preventing Blacks from voting. Segregation surfaced with a full on vitality due to the Jim Crow Laws.

 The Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws that mandated racial segregation in all public facilities such as schools, drinking fountains, and restaurants in the USA. These laws were practiced in states such as Louisiana, where as a consequence housing became very difficult for Blacks: if a Black wanted to rent any part of a

building inhabited by Whites he or she was found guilty of a misdemeanor and punished either by paying a fine or by prison. Not only did housing forged a scene of segregation, but circus tickets as well for circus ticket booths (one for Whites and one for Blacks) were to be no more than 25 feet apart.

Blacks did not condone racism nor discrimination, and they were determined to fight against this oppression, although a survey given out during the 1940s said that the Blacks were content with their current social and economic state .

The 1940s in North America were characterized by the African-Americans acquirement of rights considered essential to the American experiencepolitical, material, and civilbut they were by no means equal under the law.

During the 1940s the Blacks had more NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm created by Charles Hamilton Houston.

One of the organizations greatest achievements was the legal campaign they organized against segregation, which was effective enough to win them significant victories in the Supreme Court concerning voting, education, and interstate transportation cases.

In 1941 labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph organizes a mass movement that forces President Roosevelt to take steps against racial discrimination in defense industries.

 Deadly race riots in Detroit and New York in 1943 are followed by a postwar wave of violence against AfricanAmericans in the South. Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, thus breaking the color bar in major leaague baseball. In 1948 President Truman orders the armed forces to begin desegration. During this time, only a handful of African-Americans are employed as journalists by White-owned newspapers; the print media are almost completely segregated. One Black reporter documented about the Blacks standing social position in comparison to the Whites social position during the 1940s Living all their lives in a segregated society; ignored, stigmatized, or lampooned in the daily press, the Negro Americans have learned that only in their own weekly newspapers can they find a record of their achievements (often overemphasized), a mirror of their emotions, and an

expression of their yearnings of ull citizenship and dignity. Other papers furnish none of these things. The best chance an ordinary Negro has to get into a White newspaper is by commitiing a crime.- The Negro Press, The Reporter, December 6, 1949

Founded in 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer and other followers of Gandhian tactics, the Congerss of Racial Equality staged sit-ins and other protests against discriminatory Chicago restaurants and recreational centers.

In the late 1940s activists of the United Packinghouse Workers union also targeted segregated eateries.

On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued two executive orders: one instituted fair employment practices in the civilian agencies of the federal government, and the other provided for equality of treatment and opportunity in the

armed forces without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.

It is important to recognize that Ernest J. Ganines wrote the book using the Pre Civil Rights Movement (especially during the1940s) as a time frame, for this was the time during which the Jim Crow Laws were still in full effect, but Blacks were beginning to acquire certain rights considered essential to the American experiencepolitical, material, and civil-and began to revolutionize the social way of thinking, thus paving the way for the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.

References History.com. Civil Rights Movement. 2013. Web. 14 Sep 2013. <http://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement>. Reportingcivilrights.loa.org. Reporting Civil Rights: Timeline 19421973: 1948. 2013. Web. 14 Sep 2013. <http:llreportingcivilrights.loa.org/timeline/year.jsp?year= 1948>. Anderson, Alan B., and George W. Pickering. Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago. 1986. Meier, August, and Elliot Rudwick. CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 19421968. 1973. Ralph, James R., Jr. Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement. 1993. Shmoop. "Civil Rights Movement: Desegregation Summary & Analysis. 2013. Web. 14 Sep 2013. <http://www.shmoop.com/civilrights-desegregation/summary.html>