preview

Martin Luther King Jr. And The Black Panther Party

Good Essays

In the midst of crippling segregation of the African American population, there were many activists that paved way through these inequalities. Looking back on the United States’ history, there were many events that bring shame. One major aspect that brings embarrassment to the United States is slavery. However, even when it was abolished one hundred years prior, the African American population was still subject to severe inequities, even today. It was from the help of those like Martin Luther King Jr and the Black Panther Party that had an immense impact on advances for the African American community. Martin Luther King Jr’s, “I Have a Dream” speech sparked a turning point at this time in history. In reading this essay, it surely one filled …show more content…

strictly apply to only Whites. In order to illustrate this, King utilizes a metaphor comparing the injustices to a bad check. However, as clever as this metaphor was, it truly does not measure up to how much people were hurting at this time. Later in his essay Dr. King began to repeat “I have a dream”. This repetition started with the quote, “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” (King 2). After these two lines, Dr. King continues to repeat “I have a dream”. In repeating this multiple times, Dr. King truly reveals his hope in the American race. His speech could have been filled with anger and hate, but his words were instead passionate and powerful. It was surely difficult to determine what quotes to utilize, because his whole speech was simply astounding. Martin Luther King’s determination is truly inspiring to this day and his words are still just as powerful as they were fifty years …show more content…

The document developed by this party consisted of a list of things that the African American community desires. However, in reading this document, none of their requests were unreasonable, and should have never been “requests” in the first place. The first of which was, We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community” (Black Panther Party 1). This very first appeal is straight forward and simply demonstrates their struggle in a country into which they were born into. In addition, the third bullet point made was powerful, which states “We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community” (Black Panther Party 1) It is true that during this time that Whites dominated in every aspect, leaving African Americans with no room for growth. Furthermore, in explaining this bullet, a powerful and striking comparison was made to the Holocaust where they state, “The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over twenty million black people” (Black Panther Party 1). The Holocaust was a severely tragic and unfortunate part in history, but the number of deaths from the American racist is more staggering. These numbers are truly striking and was powerful in comparison to the Holocaust. It was also effective in

Get Access