Freedom through the pursuit of dreams in their eyes we looked to GodAfter the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves, the former slaves could not find a job good enough to earn a living. Jim Crow laws were instituted to further distance blacks from achieving their dreams. These laws were enforced after the conviction of Plessy v. Ferguson that blacks and whites could have everything "separate but equal." This included schools, transportation, drinking fountains, bathrooms and more. In 1914 all the towns were split in half with blacks on one side and whites on the other (Hoobler 51). The Homestead Act was established in 1866 to help blacks thrive in their society. Many purchased their own farms or went North and learned to linotype or practiced other professions such as shoemaking (Hoobler 51). With the black movement in the North came the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, a black movement in New York in which blacks began to express themselves and their ideas more freely (Rood 38). In illustrating the gender roles and class structure of a black society, author Zora Neale Hurston portrays the changing black society in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God through characters who follow their dreams, helping them take ownership of own life. women in a black society is one of the main themes of this novel. Many women help demonstrate Hurston's ideas. Hurston uses Janie's grandmother, Nanny, to show one extreme of women in a black society, women who follow in the footsteps of their ancestors. The nanny is stuck in the past. She still believes in all the things they once were and wants things to stay the way they were, but she also wants a better life for her granddaughter than she had. When Tata catc...... center of paper......Works Cited1. “Booker Taliafero Washington.” Alabama Department Archives and History. asc.edu. World Wide Web. January 18, 1996. Available http://www.asc.edu/archives/famous/b_wash.html.3. Encarta. Vers. 1997. Computer software. Encarta, 1997. CD-rom.4. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their eyes looked at God. 1937.5. Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas. The African American Family Scrapbook. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 19956. “Jim Crow Laws.” FX bulletin board systems. Fxbbs.com. World Wide Web. Availablehttp://www.fxbbs.com/reports/jimcrow.html .7. Nash, Gary B. American Odyssey. USA: Glencoe Division of Macmilla/McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 19928. Rood, Karen L. American Decades 1920-1929. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 19969. Whiston, Julie. World Wide Web. Available http://www.grin.edu/~gardnerj/thirties/jw.html