Blues music arose in a time where hard times plagued the black community. The genre emerged in the United States after the Civil War and is the manifestation of the strife blacks suffered post-emancipation. Although slavery was over, racism and white supremacy still persisted, and African Americans continued to endure traumatizing dehumanization. Segregation was prominent, Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes were instituted to keep blacks from having certain rights, and most black Americans lived in poverty, due to the denial of proper education and unfair sharecropping wages.