Foes of the Revolution

During the 19th and 20th century African Americans faced Discrimination in the United States. Three African Americans took roles of leadership and began trying to uplift the lives of blacks in society. Those who took control of this movement were Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B Dubois. These activists wanted the same result and implemented different techniques to follow their similar hopes for blacks in America. Each of these leaders has allowed America to develop in extensive ways for several years and those yet to come. Alternate pathways were taken by each leader to resolve the overall issue of racism. These issues include things such as not having the right to vote,own property and prevent lynchings. This paper will argue that had Garvey's theory of the new negro and Dubois’ ideas of education been implemented, racism in America would have been reduced because the allocation of education would allow for their to become a new negro. The application of Marcus Garvey's theory including thoughts of W.E.B Dubois’ on racism would have brought white power to an end.

During the 1960's, Black African Americans had to face multiple social conditions and attitudes. Many were living in poverty or low-income communities, with either no education or very limited education. This certain community during this time period was neglected, rejected, and disrespected by the American society. In Martin Luther King's book "Why We Can't Wait", he uses rhetorical strategies and devices like parallelism, repetition, imagery, and rhetorical questions in order to seek social change in the United States.

“Racism was used aggressively to divide poor white southerners from slaves. The relationship between the wealthy and the poor was aggressively exploited by the rich white slave holder to ensure the poor whites non-slave holder that they had a similar cause” (Shaping America: Lesson 16). This caused non-slave holding whites to have a similar view as latter. Non-slave holding whites were in direct competition with slaves and more often than not were forced out of work due to the free labor slavery had offered.

After Rosa Parks didn’t give up her seat for a white man to sit down, “both she and her husband had lost their jobs and suffered repeated threats and harassment” (“Parks, Rosa Louise”). They nearly lost everything just because people hated them so much. When slavery was being abolished “southerners fought bitterly to maintain the institution” because they relied on the work the blacks did and they didn’t want them to become anything so blacks would continue to work for them (“Racism”). Whites didn’t think of blacks as people, didn’t want them to get rights so they could makes something out of themselves, and didn’t want to lose their workforce. Whites hated blacks during the Jim Crow Era and now whites don’t hate blacks because of their skin

In Why We Can’t Wait by Martin Luther King Jr, Martin describes the weather and also implies that the civil rights movement were like the severe weather in 1962-63. He compared the harsh weather with the discrimination that black people were trying to overcome. In addition, black people were facing judgment, unfairness, poverty and lack of education. However, today black people often can get what they want and they come together and fight for their freedom and justice.

History, especially in regards to issues of race, is a repetitive thing. There are recurring events just with different faces, places, and circumstances consuming the individuals of the communities we live. Once where the black communities started to form their own progressive movements and make a name for themselves in America they are now regressing back to a time where justice for the black community only seems to be something we dream, hope, and fight for. Reading “The Fire this Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race” by Jesmyn Ward made me open my eyes to a different reality one that I think I tried to believe did not exist to appease the fantasy that one day we would all be seen as truly equals. In reality, we are not equals. We live in a world that constantly tries to demean people of

This moment took place over a span of time, when there were countless cases of racism across the American south and north. Another term for this span of time is referred as the Jim Crow era. In the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln freed all slaves in the southern states with his Emancipation Proclamation. By then the 1865 amendment was passed which outlawed slavery in every state, but it still took the use of federal military occupation of the old south to enforce the release of freed slaves. The southern white majority didn’t approve of this federal mandate and passed Jim Crow Laws issuing separate, but equal, was fair when it wasn’t. Some of the segregated sites included public transportation, schools, and all public facilities. “Lynch mobs were common, as was rape by white males of African American women” (Baldwin). “Between 1940 and 1960 the Great Migration brought six million African Americans to industrial centers in the urban North and West, where migrants were met with new forms of racial containment” (Baldwin). It was illegal for anyone in the states to sell, rent, or even to lease housing to black people. This caused the clear majority of African Americans to live in poor housing, while paying too much for them. World War II brought much relief to a poor American economy, and African Americans left to fight the war with the promise of better treatment. “During the war, however African Americans began to

Dating back to the 1600’s, African Americans were treated as less than human and not equal to whites. Up until 1865, blacks were enslaved by white families. They were beaten if they chose to not listen, treated inhumanely, and forced to work against their will with no payment or appreciation. Some whites would try to justify slavery by saying they would have no home or place to sleep if they were not “working” for them. The segregation at this time was just horrendous. There were “black only” and “white only” restrooms as well as “black only” and “white only” school systems. Of course the blacks restrooms were not near as nice or clean as the whites restrooms and the black schools were inferior to the white schools. One more prime example of the awful inequality is the segregated military. Blacks were considered “less capable” of performing military acts. If a black man or women actually made it in, it was only to segregated units that only did basic infantry training. They were not allowed to call any shots, drive or ride on any tanks or hum V 's or fly any plane.

Nothing could describe the relationship of the black and white communities better than the us versus them argument. This was something that had been established since the beginning of this country up until the total abolishment of segregation and even then some. White people were seen as the right, ‘proper’ brand of identity while Black-Americans were seen as something wild and uncontrollable, something that needed to be contained. They were almost a non-identity in such an extreme manner that the community was desperate for any chance of “somebodiness.” They, the black citizens of the United States, were, at that point in time, the embodiment of one of the truest American phrases: “Give me liberty or give me death.” So King and those people

On August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. In the presence of thousands of civil rights activists, from all kinds of backgrounds, white and black, rich and poor, young and old, Martin Luther King Jr. declared his dream and his vision for the future of blacks. A dream in which whites and blacks lived in harmonious peace, where segregation was no more, and where blacks rejoiced the freedom of equal rights. A dream that happened to be unrealistic. The harsh reality? Blacks were bound in chains by racial segregation and discrimination, viewed as inferior by many racist whites, and lacked equal rights. Furthermore, when blacks would peacefully protest, they were only met with brutal violence and mass casualties. Needless to say, the battle to change their future was very arduous. However, the harsh reality did not deter

In a futile attempt to protect the French Revolution from utter destruction, the revolutionary radicals decreed the Terror the “order of the day” (Danton 45) in an effort to “force people to be free.” The Terror did not pervert Revolutionary ideals but was a result of a necessary amplification of these ideas in order to ensure the safety of the Revolution. Louis Antoine Saint-Just, a French revolutionary stated that “what produces the general good is always terrible” (Louis Antoine de Saint-Just 46). France, conflicted internally and externally, needed strength and unity to create the general good. The only way to achieve the strength and unity of the nation was by “removing the source of its

Due to the lack of a definitive definition of the term “black power” whites interpreted it as an “expression a new racism” (Rustin 430). In contrast, blacks thought of “black power” as a signal to whites that blacks would not tolerate the treatment that they had received. The Black Power movement created tension in which Rustin believed the movement “diverts the (civil rights) from a meaningful debate over strategy and tactics, it isolates the Negro community, and it encourages the growth of anti-Negro forces” (Rustin 430). Thus, this tension would prohibit the progression of the civil rights movement.

This paper will discuss the Black struggle for civil rights in America by examining the civil rights movement's history and reflecting on Blacks' status in contemporary society, will draw upon various related sources to substantiate its argument. The history of Black social change following the Emancipation Proclamation will be provided to show the evolution of the civil rights struggle. Obstacles that impede the movement's chance of success, such as ignorance in both Whites and Blacks, and covert governmental racism will be discussed. The effectiveness of several elements that compose the movement will reveal their progress, and how this has aided the movement as a whole. The paper will conclude that the struggle for equality has

“African Americans could not play professional sports with white teammates or serve in the armed forces with white soldiers. Black children were educated in separate schools. Black barbers couldn 't wait on white female clients, and white female nurses couldn 't attend to black male patients.” Not every law applied in every state, but the Jim Crow laws were demoralizing and far reaching, all in the name of protecting white culture and power.

The fight for the abolition of slavery was a big battle but the one for racial segregation was a bitter one. “Race should not be a source of power or advantage or disadvantage for anyone in a free society” (Steele, page509). It is quite difficult to understand that America a nation of freedom, liberty and opportunities could have allowed some people to be oppressed. Even in the court of law the injustice persisted. “Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts” (Letter from a Birmingham Jail).