How Does Race Influence The Politics Of The 1960s

In the 1965 speech, We Shall Overcome, Lyndon B. Johnson discusses the copious amounts of cruel racial discrimination occurring in America and his plan to eradicate it. This speech follows the recent events that occurred in Selma, Alabama when African Americans were attacked while preparing to march to Montgomery in protest of voting discrimination. Johnson asserts his stance on racial equality by using compelling anaphora, the specific use of pronouns, appeals to pathos through references to the bible, and appeals to logos through the use of historical evidence. Johnson successfully utilizes these rhetorical devices in order to communicate to Americans of all races, religions, and political parties, his plan to eliminate discrimination, as well as encourage every American to embrace diversity and equality and spread his idea of a “Great Society.” Although the idea of a President with allegiances to the white southern population taking initiative towards equality was a very controversial and unfamiliar concept, Johnson does an exceptional job of maintaining an authoritative, yet inspiring tone throughout his speech in order to persuade Americans that equality is the first step to a greater nation.

Published in April of 2001 by Harper’s Magazine, David Foster Wallace’s essay is both a review of A Dictionary of Modern Usage by Bryan A. Garner and an interjection into the present day “Usage Wars.” Wallace’s thesis for his essay is stated after a list of grammatical errors that are overlooked on a daily basis and a few paragraphs defining SNOOT. His thesis states, “Issues of tradition vs. egalitarianism in U.S. English are at root political issues and can be effectively addressed only in what this article hereby terms a “Democratic Spirit.” A Democratic Spirit is an attitude a person can have only by being fervent in his/her beliefs while also recognizing and respecting the beliefs of another.

Charles Lawrence has been active in his use of the First Amendment rights since he was a young boy. When confronted with the issue of racist speech, he feels that it needs to be diminished by society as a unit, because this discrimination does not just effect one person, but society

America has a long history of oppression, discrimination and injustices towards African Americans, however the 1960s has brought important political and social changes. People who have not lived through this decade of change can gather some information of this time through historical documents such as letters and films that portray true events. An example of a film that is based on a true story is “Mississipi Burning” and a powerful historical document is “A Letter from Burmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther king. Each of these materials describes/portrays some of the issues African-American faced during the 1960s, specifically in the south. After analyzing these materials, we are able to understand some of what African-Americans endured during the 1960s.

How could Booker T. Washington realistically expect African Americans to essentially pretend to be buddies with white people? The south still felt slavery was a good thing. Slaves created a significant amount of income for their owners. The south felt it was a social necessity and wanted to prevent the risk of a race war. Nobody even knows how much northern whites cared about African Americans in the first place. Abraham Lincoln was racist and never made the war about slavery until the south was winning all the battles in the first stages of the war and parts of the northern population wanted out of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation was just a military strategy. It accomplished two major things that helped the north eventually win. Banning slavery made the north feel like they had something to fight for. They felt like it was good versus evil. So it was a morale booster. The

Many critics classify the 1960’s as the decade of urban uprising and political shifts in the United States. Controversy surrounded these changes whether they were good or bad for the nation and leaving many Americans questioning the power of urban and political movements. In the excerpt “Triumph of the Left: Sixties Revolution and The Revolution in Manners” Kenneth Cmiel from the University of Iowa shows how the era of the sixties altered and affected the morals of many Americans when they encountered discrimination, hatred, and inequality. Along with that, Dan T. Carter carefully analyzes the political outcomes of the Presidential campaign of the 1960’s and it’s victory in the excerpt “Triumph of the Right: George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and the Critique of Federal Activism.” While many still argue that both of the tumultuous decade’s social movements harmed the way the United Sates functions today, it also evidently shows to be victorious due to its liberal changes that alters the ways Americans live and perform then and now. Both Cmiel and Carter support their positions with evidence that demonstrates that both urban uprising and political shifts successfully depart the nation from falling into conservative circumstances. Not only do both triumphs succeed, but they also open up doors for economic and political opportunities in the United States.

the speech “With Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer,” Malcolm affirms that because the black man is denied the right to vote in the south of the forty-six committees that had control the foreign and domestic direction of the country in 1964 twenty-three were in the hands of Southern racists. Another account concerning voting in the south, Malcolm

Once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes, it is no longer legal to discriminate based on race in public accommodations, employment, education, and federally financed activities (Alexander, 2012). This law creates fear and uncertainty in working-class white communities since they live near black communities. Now blacks will be competing with working-class whites for jobs and included in their children’s schools. In the 1960s working-class whites are historically aligned with the Democratic Party, but the Republicans see an opening to win their votes after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Republicans exploit working-class white’s fears of blacks and discuss the need to restore “law and order” (Alexander, 2012, p.46). Once working-class white

After reading Dog Whistle Politics by Ian-Hanley Lopez, I became disgusted. I was with some disbelief that there were such a thing as dog whistling and how politicians use it to get votes. Most of this dog whistling tactics involves racial slurs. So I decided to do some research to see if any of the current Presidential Candidates of 2016 fell into this category. I looked at all the Republican, since Lopez’s book revolved around the GOP in using these distasteful tactics. I looked at all of the Republican Candidates polices and statements that were stated in debates, speeches, interviews, and social media sites. Unfortunately I found a candidate that was notorious for dog whistling, this Republican Candidate was Donald Trump. When it comes to Trump’s statements in debates, speeches, interviews, and social media sites a lot of negativity is involved around immigration issues in the United States.

In the article “Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-racialism” the author Lawrence Bobo reflects on the racial justice struggle from the mid 1960’s in the South. Post-racialism in America was hoped to collapse after the election of the first African-American President Barack Obama of the United States in 2008. Post-racialism is defined to signal signs of racial change of a hopeful trajectory for events and social trends (Bobo, 2006, p.93). Three key questions discussed were racial boundaries, the degree of racial economic inequality, and what is known about changes in racial attitudes from the 1960’s in the United States to 2017.

Due to the Cold War, the 1960s saw a worldwide increase in students with higher levels of education, who, armed with a language of dissent from academic literature, generated counterresponses to both capitalism and communism. In the US, writers like Galbraith and Goldwater inspired dissident student voices from both the political left and right. While some were inspired by Johnson’s and Randolph’s Civil Rights rhetoric, and participated in Freedom Rides, others aligned with Wallace’s segregationist ideologies. A similar culture of dissent was also apparent in the Soviet Union, where Solzhenitsyn and self-published samizdat provided the language of anti-communist dissent, which compared Soviet life to life in a Gulag prison. Unlike in the US,

It was a time of conflict, excitement, and confusion in the United States. And this was also “Black Power” of the Civil Rights Movement. Moody at that time was a member of NAACP. She was involved in her first sit-in, and her social science professor, John Salter, who was in charge of NAACP asked her to be the spokesman for a team that would sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter (Moody 1968, 286). Although she could go to jail for this, but she still agreed. After that, she joined CORE and continued to fight for the voting rights (Moody 1968, 311). Following passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the struggle for racial justice moved to the next battleground: voting rights in the Deep South. The campaign was already under way in places like Selma, Alabama, where local activists, facing intense white resistance, asked Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference for support (Ayers 2010, 780). Black voter registration in the South was one of the great accomplishments of the civil rights movement. Within months of its passage, more than 2 million black southern were registered to vote. Most supported the Democratic Party of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, which had endorsed the cause of civil rights (Ayers 2010, 782).

The president-elect’s campaign of coded, “dog whistle” language worked to consolidate a solid 58% majority of white voters. His successful rise was fueled by many things: the fact that there is a black man in the White House, America’s steady advancement towards becoming a majority-minority country and the fact that minorities are flexing their political muscles.

“That is very nice Wallace, now, I am going to pass the mic. off to our audience, does anyone want to share the reason, or reasons that they voted for Wallace, or should I say, Mister

First, the Englishmen would tell him to plead for mercy, then the crowd and then repeated. Next, the English King was shown dying, again the Englishmen and the crowd shouting for mercy, and so on (1995). It created a build to Wallace’s ultimate decision when he cried, “Freedom!” It showed Wallace’s confidence in going against everyone’s wishes but God’s, and he did so by self-sacrifice.