Education and Segregation: The African-American Southern Baptist Experience (english paper)

Excerpt from English 3300D paper:
Imagine having to be escorted to class by armed guards because there is a huge crowd of people so consumed with hate and fear that they would rather see you dead than attend school with them and/or their children. Imagine being pelted with rocks while walking down the street, having food dumped on you because you sat at a lunch counter, having the police officers that are sworn to uphold the law and protect American citizens release their dogs and turn high-powered fire hoses on a crowd of men, women, children, or being so desensitized to death that the foul stench of a lynched Blackman's body strung up in a tree causes not one missed step as you pass by. As unimaginable and reprehensible as these things may seem now they were a regular occurrence for post-slavery African-Americans in this country.
While many people condemn slavery as a cruel and barbaric practice, slaves were actually a lot safer in America than the freed blacks were. Ex-slaves, that were no longer considered valuable property, were unable to count on the protection they had once been afforded by their former masters (Oshinsky, 1996, p. 25). These former slaves soon became subject to severe discrimination and various oppressive laws, such as Jim Crow, the Black Codes, and the Pig Law, that were "designed to drive [them] back to their home plantations" and maintain the same level of social inequality that had existed in the South during slavery (Oshinsky, 1996, p.21). Although emancipation ended slavery it did not put an end to the assumption about Blacks upon which slavery was based (Oshinsky, 1996, p. 17). The idea of justifying slavery by claiming Black inferiority and incompetence led to the lack of interest in supplying adequate and equal education for the former slaves. Blacks were only capable of being slaves requiring no need for formal education, and many people who tried to teach them were considered troublemakers and attacked. This belief in Black incompetence and inferiority poses a quandary as to the motivation behind such forceful denial of education. Why deny a people the right to obtain an education when their intellectual inferiority renders them incapable of learning? What is the fear that motivates the extensive methods used to preserve white supremacy? The answer, according to noted author, poet, and professor Nikki Giovanni, is that "the laws […] were made not because we were incapable. You do not have to legislate against incapability […] unless there is the knowledge that if that person becomes educated he or she will no longer be my slave" (1994, p. 92-93).