Less than fifty years ago, America was a society of segregation and racism. Racism is defined as “the belief that a particular race is superior to another” (p. 3?). While it's clear that things have changed, racism is still visible in modern America. Relations between African Americans and whites are generally better than in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, it is not common to see a black man walking down the street and step off the curb to let a white man pass, or to see a black man sitting in a different section of the bus or train because a white man says he has too . But the superiority of the races is still in place. A lot of this has to do with the ignorance of others. Passed down from generation to generation, learned in school or passed on through entertainment. It is accurate to say that racism is something that is learned throughout life. While it is not as bad as in the past, it is unmistakably evident that racism still exists in today's society. Thousands of years ago, Portuguese sailors found advanced African cultures. When they couldn't keep up with the Portuguese, they were considered stupid. The Portuguese began to welcome them as slaves. They were not considered human, more or less “subhuman” and were called “beasts”. Slavery, of course, is the most overt form of racism (Page 3). It is very clear that slavery was a significant problem in the country. Slavery was eventually abolished in the country, but before that happened, the country split and civil war began. People struggled to treat blacks horribly, keeping them as slaves, beating them, and not providing them with adequate food, education, or shelter. After slavery ended, the violence worsened. This is the time when the Jim Crow laws were enacted. Jim Crow laws began in Massachusetts. Although it was a Northern state (slavery and racism were common in the South more than the North), it allowed the separation of blacks and whites on the railroads. By 1900, laws allowing such separation were established throughout the country (Cayton, Perry, Reed, and Winkler). Under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, blacks enjoyed the same legal protection as whites.