African Rights In America Essay

During this time, lynching was used to control, intimidate, and manipulate a certain group of people, striking fear into their hearts.

Barnett was a critical social liberties pioneer. She recorded various lynchings in the U.S and was a major piece of the counter lynching development inside the NAACP. Recollected for the most part for his initiative in the NAACP, and one of the fundamental movers of the Harlem Renaissance. No great outcome can originate from any examination which declines to consider the certainties. A conclusion that depends on an assumption rather than the best proof is unworthy of a moment's thought. The lynching record, as it is assembled from everyday by unprejudiced, solid, and mindful open diaries, ought to be the premise of each examination which looks to find the reason and recommend the solution for lynching. The reasons of lynchers and the credible supplications of their theological rationalists ought to be considered in the light of the record, which they constantly distort or disregard. The part of women in the public eye had taken a gigantic jump forward In 1920 when all the women were given the privilege to vote. The parts of American Women in the 1920s differed impressively between the 'New Woman', the Traditionalists and the more established

The 1960s were a time of upheaval and revolution, in this decade America took great leaps towards equality as activists throughout the country protested and demanded their basic American rights. One of these basic rights, one granted to many Americans by the 15th Amendment, a right which many African-Americans did not have. The “poll tax was revived” in southern states to “to prevent African-Americans” from “voting” (thefreedictionary.com). The right to vote is essential, and the poll tax prohibited the average man from voting, as most did not not have enough money to pay the tax. The 24th amendment was an essential event in the 1960s--setting a new benchmark for equality in America, one that included the African Americans.

In 1619, when enslaved Africans were brought to the colony of Virginia, they did not initially suffer the racism and oppression that would soon engulf their race. The idea of poor whites and slaves joining forces would become a shock one hundred years later. Masters would abuse their servants with hard usage and oppression. Due to the fact that the New World land was boundless and cheap labor was limited, Virginia planters found enslaved Africans to be a more efficient source of cheap labor. Because African salves entered the colonies as aliens, they became a working class fit for maximum exploitation and capable of only minimal resistance. In the next 250 years, American laws tried to reduce black people to a class of untouchables. Laws

In the early 1600’s slavery became a part of Northern American colonies, during that time workers were in short supply and the work was harsh. Prior to the cramped Dutch ships sailing in with African American slaves in the early seventeenth century the men and woman working in the land were not sufficient enough to solve their problems. By the end of 1700 's during the time of the American Revolution the slaves became unbeneficial to them and began dying out. Even in the South the slaves became unprofitable to the farmers because the cost of tobacco prices varied. Until in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin; a machine for separating cotton from its seeds. Cotton replaced tobacco as the South 's main cash crop and slavery became beneficial again.

Over the last thirty years, significant scholars of American (particularly southern) lynching such as George C. Wright, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, Christopher Waldrep, William D. Carrigan, Amy Louise Wood, and Manfred Berg have written at length about the social structure and cultural context of the collective violence, much of it racially motivated, that plagued the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States. With the exception of Wright's and Waldrep's work, lynching scholarship (including my own) has tended to focus more on the structure and context of lynching violence than on its impact on African American communities. Focusing on the violence itself as well as those who perpetrated it, scholars

If granted permission, I intend for this essay to be a thorough study of public lynching in the United States of America before the Civil Rights Movement: who, what, when, where, and why? To begin with, although it is evident that we have been conditioned to think of the criminal justice system as a pillar of virtue and a projection of our societal ethics, as lynching is the practice of murder by extrajudicial action, this paper will contain a central theme suggesting that legality is not synonymous with morality. I intend to give credence to this assertion by dedicating a portion of this essay to delineating a few of the thousands of instances of public lynching in pre-Civil Rights Movement America, wherein the punishments did not fit the

The forms of lynching are varied. One common form of lynching that has has existed since 19th century until today is shooting. A shooting case happened in Cleveland by a police officer toward a 12 year-old boy, Tamir Rice. According to the article, “Cleveland Leaders Bypass Prosecutors charge in Tamir Rice Case” that,

As previously mentioned, lynching is not something you hear about being done today, but the meaning behind it still exists. In present day, today we still see a lot of racism between whites and people of color. We constantly tend to see a news report on how a white cop has killed a black person for no valid reason. Many examples include Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner. The inequality between the races has sparked the Black Lives Matter activist movement, which was created right after the unjust verdict of State of Florida V George Zimmerman, where Zimmerman was pleaded not guilty after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

In early 17th century, European settlers used slaves as cheap servants. Slaves were the personal property of their owners, and slave masters had absolute authority over them as human property. Chattel slaves, as they were traditionally referred to in the past, were bought and sold as if they were possessions. Even though owning a person as property was lawfully protected in the United States, enslaved individuals were not protected from mistreatment and abuse they endured. Historically, slaves experienced abuse at the hands of their masters. Slaves were chained, whipped and were often beaten while withstanding days of hard labor. Although we are taught that slavery ended centuries ago and the 13th amendment

Africans lived in bondage, but it was far less systematized than in the South and there was greater opposition, especially in Quaker

slave captured. Slaves have been separated from their friends and families and were treated as animals

Discrimination against black society has been going on for centuries including today. Slavery on the other hand began in the early 1600’s. The start of slavery began when Africans were taken from their home to be slaves in America, slaves formed uprisings across the states, and a war between the north and the south caused a huge shift in the United States.

For 189 years’ millions of African Americans became involuntary immigrants (Library of Congress, 2008). In 1619 20 African Americans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia on a Dutch vessel. The next slaves arrived in Amsterdam and then New York and by 1690 there were slaves in every colony (Tanner, 2016). Europeans, Africans and Americans were benefiting from the profitable trade of humans. It was never intended that African Americans would become citizens of the United States of America. So, when Thomas Jefferson dictated “All men are created equal” in 1776, it was to his surprise, as a slave owner himself, that this would include slaves as well (Historical Timeline, 2006). As politicians and business men were supporting and benefiting from the slave trade they were themselves fighting for independence from England (Historical Timeline, 2006). Yet they could not understand how it was righteous for slaves to fight for their independence as well (Historical Timeline, 2006).

Biss makes it clear that these crimes, whether real or imagined, did not fit the punishment; if judged in an esteemed court of law, the “perpetrators” would likely not be sentenced to death (in modern times). This highlights the racial discord which characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Similarly, it is important to note that lynchings were often intended to serve as warnings to minorities – either abide by egregious rules or suffer similar fates. Biss’ article makes it painfully clear that lynching victims were comprised of Black people accused of perpetrating minor crimes against White people.