Essay on A Peaceful Approach to Equality

In Chapter 4 of his book, which is aptly titled “Postwar Passions”, Daniels chooses to focus on the experiences of African-Americans in the post-WWI era, specifically focusing on race riots that occurred during the “Red Summer” of 1919. (104) There is a long-standing history of racial discord between whites and African-Americans, but the post-WWI years are a unique time. It has been more than fifty years since slavery has been abolished, but it will still take another forty plus years before discrimination on the basis of race is made illegal in America. Industrialization after the turn of the century and blatant racism in the South led to the migration of millions of African-Americans to northern

    One of the most horrific events that happened in 1917 was the Tulsa Outrage. The Tulsa Outrage was most known for when seventeen men were murdered. One late November night a group of about fifty men dressed in all black known as the “Wobblies” approached seventeen men. The seventeen men were then “pulled from the lineup, tied to a tree, a Knight approached every man with a double piece of hemp rope and whipped the victim’s back until blood draped their backs. Another man stepped forward and slathered boiling tar on the victim’s backs with a paint brush, coating him from head to seat. The final act of humiliation, the Knight then padded the victim’s back with feathers from a down pillow”(Chapman 2). “According to multiple interviews conducted by National Civil Liberties Bureau Investigator L.A.

America in 1857 was a “Nation on the Brink.” Relationships between the Northern and Southern states had been strained for decades. During the 1850 's, the situation exploded. The Compromise of 1850 served as a clear warning that the slavery issue—relatively dormant since the Missouri Compromise of 1820—had returned. African Americans existence in America has been a disaster ever since they have been here. Every avenue of their cultural, economic, literary, political, religious, and social values has been violated to no avail, and then only until the

The national narrative of transformation depicted in the appended PowerPoint presentation purports to explain African American's longwinded struggle for voting rights. The story begins with a newspaper advertisement of black slaves for purchase. The advertisement perpetuates the ubiquitously presumed value of black people as commodities which consecutively invalidates black people’s value as human beings. Considering black people’s undervalued reputation, they were not appreciated as citizens of the United States until 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 marked the beginning of transformation, as all native-born Americans including blacks were given the rights to citizenship.

Black people in the U.S have been fighting for themselves since the birth of America. Many today say that it will never stop. They may say that the challenges they face will never disappear. During the 1800s Blacks went through extreme hardships. Most of which were regarding slavery and the many attempts to put an end to it. The title of Howard Zinn’s Chapter Nine in A people’s History of the U.S represents much more than a typical reader would presume. The title has a meaning that represents a bulk of black history in the United States of America. The chapter title “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom” represents the everlasting fight that black people in the United States of America have had to put up for their own rights and freedom because blacks fought during the time of slavery and didn’t give up, the time period spent fighting to end slavery, and even after Slaves were freed they have had to continue fighting for the reason that they weren’t given true freedom.

The Tulsa Race Riot is an event that is quite possibly the most unknown and misconstrued piece of history in the United States of America. When and if it is discussed, it’s taken as a single event that happened in Tulsa and was deadly and very destructive. The many theories of what occurred and how it came to the extreme mob like violence taken on Tulsa’s own civilians. The evidence found suggest there were alternative motives in Tulsa for acquiring land that the black civilians held.

Freedom is a fundamental human right that all Americans enjoy today. Foner defines freedom as the ability of an individual to do as he/she wishes as long as long as the actions are within the law and respect the right of others (2). Accordingly, freedom is among the rights that are anchored in American constitution to protect the civil liberties of all Americans. Today, America is regarded as a democratic country that operates within the rule of law partly because of its respect for human rights (Romano 3). However, history shows that the freedom that African Americans enjoy today did not come easily; rather came after a long and enduring struggle by Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). It is noted that, unlike white Americans who enjoyed freedom to do as they wished in the early 19th century, African Americans were denied the freedom to operate freely like their white counterparts (Foner 6). Therefore, because curtailing the freedom of African Americans were denying them the opportunity to advance socially, economically and politically, the Civil Rights Movement was formed by Martin Luther King Junior and colleagues to fight against racial segregation and to ensure that African Africans gain equal rights as the whites. This essay seeks to explore the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968) struggle for freedom and

killed than the amount of people being killed in the Chicago race riots. Fighting was happening all over our country. We were killing one another because of the hatred towards racism. “The Red Summer of 1919 refers to a series of race riots that took place between May and October of that year. Although riots occurred in more than thirty cities throughout the United States, the bloodiest events were in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Elaine, Ark.” (Retreived from the About Education website : http://afroamhistory.about.com/od/segregation/p/The-Red-Summer-Of-1919.htm). The riots lasted for about 5 months in 1919. That is almost half of the year of killing, shooting, and fighting. There wasn’t any sign of peace. All that needed to happen was for a law to be set of not making any type of racial decision or comment towards anyone. Twenty-five race riots occurring in one summer is a case that had to be solved quickly. Nobody was willing to take action like Martin Luther King did in the 1950’s and 60’s towards stopping segregation and racism. (Retreived from the biography website : http://www.biography.com/people/martin-luther-king-jr-9365086).

Frederick Douglass once said, “No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.” Throughout the history of America his words have proven true seeing that those of African descent have been faced with a tremendous amount of prejudice. Whether that be in terms of the basic rights vital to African americans, or the freedom of expression that should be allotted to every human being. They were subjected to endless economic and social prejudice. While at the same time being refused the decencies all American citizen deserved. But most importantly, African Americans were denied the right to decide how their country was controlled and in turn their “liberty”. These atrocities prove that the reform introduced during the Reconstruction era did little to resolve the problems plaguing African Americans or improve their quality of life.

In the early 1800's, when many immigrants came over from other countries, violence against the natives increased dramatically. America being the young nation it was could not deal with the violence in the nation. The author states "Justice often meant "frontier justice", in which groups of the local citizenry took the law into their own hands: hanging horse thieves, or riding undesirables out of town were among the ways early criminal sentencing was handled" (Moser, Watters p 481). Following the Civil War, many whites started organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, Bald Knobbers, and the White Cappers.

The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the culmination of racial tensions both endemic in American society as a whole in the period, and certain tensions peculiar to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1921, Greenwood and its African American population became the outlet for these often violent tensions seething among Tulsa’s white population. The following paper seeks to shed some further understanding on what motivated and pushed the whites of Tulsa, Oklahoma to such a violent, extreme reaction during the riot.

The spoils of hegemony spread through the American landscape in those ebullient years following World War II. The perks of empire-building abroad translated into an uninterrupted period of economic growth and labor reforms that re-calibrated the national consciousness and allowed, for the first time, the emergence of a middle class with sufficient autonomy and self-awareness to exert political influence and correct the power imbalance that had characterized the first decades of the 20th century. This social Renaissance, however, had been distributed unevenly along racial lines, and no government of the time sought to redress the disparity between white economic advancement and the stagnant conditions imposed on social minorities, ossified as they were by decades of systematic subjugation before society and before the law. Discontent seethed beneath black communities, who felt increasingly isolated -and persecuted- by the same social institutions who had demanded so high a sacrifice during the second World War, a sacrifice summoned and re-visited by the looming threat of a war with Vietnam. The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education was seen by many as a hollow victory, given the lethargic response of the Eisenhower administration to enforce the legislation, particularly in the Southern states where racial tensions, unaddressed by the larger cultural zeitgeist, had metamorphosed into open hostility and palpable contempt. An American president would not align himself with the

In 1865, the United States government implemented what was known as Reconstruction. Its’ purpose was to remove slavery from the south, and give African-American’s the freedom in which they deserved. However, the freedom that they deserved was not the freedom that they received. With documents like The Black Codes restricting them from numerous privileges that white people had and the terroristic organization known as the Klu Klux Klan attacking and killing them, African-American’s were still being oppressed by their government as well as their fellow man. Slavery may have been abolished, but African-American’s were not yet given the freedom and rights that their white counterparts took for granted.

In 1894, the US Supreme Court gave legal consent to state laws segregating black people and white people with its decision concerning the Plessey v Ferguson case. The decision stated that black and white should be separate but equal, meaning the same standard of facilities for both. In reality it legally enforced a state of affairs that assured that blacks would never be equal, and couldn’t get equal treatment, status or opportunity in their own country. During the Second World War, the black American Gi’s realised that they were fighting for a democracy abroad, which they did not have at home.

Although the conclusion of the Civil War during the mid-1860s demolished the official practice of slavery, the oppression and exploitation of African Americans has continued. Although the rights and opportunities of African Americans were greatly improved during Reconstruction, cases such a 1896’s Plessy v. Ferguson, which served as the legal basis for segregation, continue to diminish the recognized humanity of African Americans as equal people. Furthermore, the practice of the sharecropping system impoverished unemployed African Americans, recreating slavery. As economic and social conditions worsened, the civil rights movement began to emerge as the oppressed responded to their conditions, searching for equality and protected