ugust 9, 2014, Michael Brown’s body laid in the Missouri sun for four hours after being killed by a Ferguson police officer. As his body lay there, I sat in my kitchen packing for freshman move-in with tears of anger streaming down my face. I knew the unarmed Black teen could have been my older brother or a high school friend. What I did not know, was that Brown’s death would be my intellectual and personal catalyst. Just days after Brown’s death, I participated in my first protest. As I walked chanting “Black Lives Matter” through the streets of Atlanta in a crowd of passionate, disillusioned, mourning, energetic comrades, I found my niche. One week later I arrived on Emory University’s Atlanta campus, a world away from the overwhelmingly Black city of Decatur where I grew up. I arrived planning to major in political science, already enrolled in classes that would fuel my hunger to understand institutions and political behavior. Simultaneously, the wake of the Ferguson unrest and the shock of a predominately white institution led me to enroll in an intro to African-American studies class. In that course, I learned that the racial and political uprisings of the 1960s led Black college students to demand Black studies programs, creating the interdisciplinary field that I declared as my second major immediately. In fall 2015, I took a university-wide graduate course called “The Ferguson Movement” focused on the political, economic, and social characteristics of Ferguson, MO.
A necessary and common fight for equality has been one that has survived throughout all of man’s existence. Due to recent racial divide and the product of racial profiling, a movement has risen up to combat these common issues. The most recent and most well-covered is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Even though it has been lauded by some media sources and individuals as the next great movement to champion for civil rights, the Black Lives Matter movement is not the same as the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s nor is it likely to be as successful. If the Black Lives Matter Movement continues with discrepancies in ideology, lack of clear leadership, and trends of hate, the movement is doomed to fail.
DuBois and Malcolm differ in their essentials pertaining to the “reeducation” of African Americans. DuBois argues traditional education as essential because it provides people of color a voice with which to protest and is the key to ultimately gaining success. He argues education will help lead racial progress in America, and he proves this by presenting statistical data on the career trajectory of black men who have received higher education.
Student Union Address at BSU’s 3rd annual Black Faculty, Staff, and Student Mixer. This years theme is “The Resurgence of College Activism: 1960 vs. 2016” With the current racial climate in the United States, we chose a theme that can incorporate not only student activism on campus, but in their general community as well. The distinguished student that is chosen will be tasked with conducting a ten to twenty minute address in front of the their peers and faculty/staff on campus regarding either A) Answering the questions “How can the black student community
Civil rights groups are not a new thing in the United States, but after the disputed case of Trayvon Martin who was killed by George Zimmerman, the movement has been growing tumultuously. After Martin’s death, hundreds of high school teens began protesting, demanding both Zimmerman and chief police be fired. With the help of social media, Umi Selah and other activists were able to organize a forty-mile march from Daytona Beach to the headquarters of Sanford Police Department (the department that dealt with Martin and Zimmerman’s case.) The march lasted four days and ended in a five-hour blockade of the Sanford Police Department’s door. This organized protest was just the beginning of what quickly became the Black Lives Matter movement (McClain 2016).
There is no shortage of layman debates and emotional activity; however, there is very little in the way of strategic engagement of the enigmatic issues that are incessantly pressing against the peace and livelihood of blacks across this country. On a national level, in 2014, the nation experienced significant struggles in the area of education, income, employment and socioeconomic advancement, and the
Although there was significant progress made in the 60’s Civil Rights Movements, African American lives still find themselves the subjects of racial profiling and police brutality cases. Specific incidents have brought the controversies to the public eye through social media and backlash from social movements. The cases of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland led to the controversies and feelings of judicial injustice; these events and public outrage sparked and fueled the movement “Black Lives Matter”, which was established to challenge and combat racial discrimination and police brutality. Since then, the movement has gained momentum and continues to gain followers and validity. Social media has also been a main contributor to the cause, as the
The shooting of sparked a nation-wide movement not only demanding justice for Mike Brown, but also protesting the racial discrimination deeply embedded in the criminal justice system as well as various institutions in the larger American society. Furthermore, jfdkjfjdakljk something about international recognition. Similar protests and riots have been springing up in other cities since 1960s, and police killings of unarmed black men happen once every 28 hours (Kahle, 2014). However, Michael Brown’s killing has led to the most sustained uprising against police violence in at least two decades, centered among the African American residents of Ferguson, and has rallied significant nationwide support as well as international attention (Kahle, 2014; Taylor, 2014). The killing of Michael Brown is by no means an isolated event, and presence of racial tensions, especially in the St. Louis area, was already present long before. The large-scale pushback that the killing of Michael Brown has set in motion, then, seems to have been the last straw, prompting the eruption of decades of pent up frustration at a racist and oppressive system. That being said, what are the previous straws that have slowly pushed the black community in Ferguson to the breaking point? What are the factors that have caused these tensions to boil over and erupt into such a large-scale upheaval? This paper will explore some of the
After his death, a group of protesters chanting “black lives matter” shut down a local shopping mall which lead to further deaths of unarmed black men. The phrase started appearing on t-shirts and posters banners everywhere. Black Lives Matter surfaced and the movement created itself. There are now more than 37 movement chapters in the U.S and one in Canada. “The movement doesn’t win if there’s only a small set of people who understand the solutions. It wins when there’s a broad understanding that we need a system that doesn’t kill people, when a critical mass of citizens can envision what that looks like, and what concrete steps are taken to make it happen.” Says Deray Mckesson, a 29-year-old man who drove 600 miles to witness the Ferguson scene himself. McKesson met a woman here who he began sharing information about events and tweeting updates, who then quickly became the most recognizable figures associated with the movement in
Subsequent police shootings of unarmed black locals in New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles propelled the “Black Lives Matter” movement.
These three things all contribute to the change we want to see in society. Currently, The Black Lives Matter movement is at the point of causing civil disobedience, which is used to gain the attention of the media, politicians and the nation as a whole. The movement works at different levels with the hopes of making changes in society which in turn would promote equality within the criminal justice system. Leaders of Black Lives Matter understand how the general population’s beliefs about crime and racism acts as an antagonist to any sort of reform to lower racial discrepancies, due to this they are trying to emphasize how race does matter in both the criminal justice system and society through the means of protests. The 23 active Black Lives Matter chapters across the United States are staging demonstrations in order to get society to acknowledge that there is a problem, and once people begin to listen, there can be legal challenges and new laws that work to influence a societal change. On August 28th, 2014 during Labor Day weekend supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement from around the nation set out to participate in a Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride. This protest, based off of the 1960s Freedom Riders, brought people to Ferguson, MO, the city where Michael Brown was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson. Naturally this
For the Social Justice Action Project, Britnee and I interviewed college students in the Northeast region who revealed their views on the Black Lives Matter Movement, racial injustice, and racial profiling. We had wanted to inform people of what the Black Lives Matter Movement stood for and tackle some of the myths and misconceptions of what the organization represented. In the process, the interviewees have expressed their feelings of how today’s society is blinded by irrational thinking and biased beliefs. This project have made us realize that people often blame the movement of being inconsiderate to all lives matter, relating the movement to the “armed and dangerous” Black Panthers, and the never-ending issues of police-to-black killings.
The Civil Rights Movement from the mid 1950’s to late 1960’s fought for equal rights of People of color in this nation. That movement was successful in pushing for an end to racial segregation and discrimination in the country. Decades later, a new movement is beginning to gain traction in the fights against excess police brutality against People of Color. “Since the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's killer in 2013 and the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the phrase "black lives matter" has become a rallying cry for a new chapter in the long black freedom struggle” ( Cooper 2017). The movement has been growing since and more and more after every new case of a person of color being killed by police enforcement. Contemporary anti-racist social movements like Black Lives Matter have had a definitive impact in changing the way people of color are treated, by creating the very important conversation of police brutality against people of color. In order to keep the movement growing, it have has to keep expanding its message of excessive police violence and push for policies that would create better training for law enforcement.
In recent years, America has experienced a surge of a new movement which encapsulates the concerns of its minority groups and youth. A prominent issue in American society is the treatment of African-Americans, and how they have become increasingly criminalized and targeted. The Black Lives Matter Movement sprung from the increasing mistreatment of black people by police, i.e. the homicides of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown. Black activists have created the movement and offered their own perspectives of what the movement means to them and the implications it has on American society.
A City Where Black Power Won: The Origins of the Black Panther Party on College Campuses
Over the course of the semester, there has been numerous amount of areas where I believe I have improved in comparison to high school. What has helped me in my writing is the writing class and the in-class writing workshop. The writing class that is located in the Kremen education building has helped me with my writing greatly because in the writing center the person in charge teach us lenses and we apply those lenses to the writing, draft, or reading that someone brings in. The in-class writing workshop has helped me because other students get to read my writing. This is helpful because I get feedback from many students and they let me know what needs to be fixed. A new tool I have been using is They Say I Say. The book is very helpful because of the information and examples it provides such as the templates. I have been applying the templates into my essays and I have seen a significant difference.