The, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness

The United States is a immigrant country, which faces varieties of problems. The African American problem is one of the most serious one. Racial segregation is a deep-rooted social problem, which reflects in every field in the United States. For example, education, labor market and criminal justice system. In the aspect of education, most of black children were not permitted to enter the school, because the white children studied there. In the aspect of labor market, the black people 's average wages were lower than the whites. They did the manual work. In the aspect of criminal justice system, the blacks were easily in jail. Badly, their sentences were also more serious than the whites. In general, the blacks live in the bottom of the American society. Martin Luther King delivered the famous speech I Have a Dream, ' ' I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ' ' (1) However, it was difficult for African American to get the freedom. The 1776 Declaration of Independence announced that everyone are equal and freedom.But black slavery still occurred in the southern states of America. Then the Civil War broke out, African American kept struggling for land and political rights.

America is a nation “from many, one” as stated in our country’s original motto. We pride ourselves on the granted equal opportunity and freedom afforded to each citizen. But are these premises held true and adequately carried out? My answer is a resounding no! Our country’s intricate history provides us with the foundation that explains why and how discrimination has infiltrated and given the upper hand to the white race that has dominated the American society, while suppressing races of color. Dating back to the discovery of the new world we know as the contemporary United States, the African American race has been segregated and mistreated as exemplified through

Over the last few centuries, the rights and freedoms of various citizens from the United States of America have been compromised throughout history. Racism in the USA has been a topic heavily debated over the years, from the beginning of the black slave trade in the early 17th century, to the movement that worked for the racial desegregation all over America. Although the black people of America have gone through a large struggle to gain their rights and freedoms, there has been success. These successes include the illegalisation of slavery in America, the racial desegregation of various facilities so they were able to be used equally and fairly by all American citizens, and the fall of the Ku Klux Klan and the illegalisation of their ideals

Until this day, the American Civil War is still one of the most prominent wars that was ever fought in America. The war was first caused by the disagreement between the Federalists and Anti-federalists regarding on how the United States should be governed. Soon, the war began and gunshots exploded the country everyday. The war continued on for several years and in 1865, the war finally ended and America was already torn into pieces. Following the war, the Congressmen had to recover from its loss and settle the disagreements that existed in Congress in order to prevent another war from happening. Therefore, the Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteenth Amendments, also known as the Reconstruction Amendments were passed as an attempt to achieve peace

The North’s victory after four years of fighting in the Civil War in 1865 allowed the 13th amendment to pass, and eventually added the 14th and 15th amendment to the constitution. These abolished slavery and attempted to create equal rights among all people. The Reconstruction Act divided the South into separate military districts and formed governments based on male suffrage. The South and North had extremely different views on how to rebuild the South and how former slaves should be incorporated into the country as freed people. The process of the Reconstruction period of rebuilding the South proposed many new challenges. The efforts to ensure equal rights to the freedmen failed because of the acts that were passed to control the labor and

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are the three rights granted to every American, however, this did not seem to apply to the poor during the Gilded Age. The poor lacked opportunities to climb the ladder of social class to escape poverty, and the wealth of America was so concentrated in an individual few that one man, J.P. Morgan, was able to end the Financial Panic of 1893, preventing an economic depression. The rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. The disparity between the wealthy and those facing poverty was ever growing, which makes one question, what should be done, if anything at all? This was a major problem during the time and was the topic of many debates. Figures like William Graham Sumner,

In 1861-1865, The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free (northerners) and slave states (south) over the power of the government to end slavery in the places that had not yet become states. This is when in 1865, the United States defeated the North and abolished slavery nationwide. As the war was about to end, the southern states were re-admitted to the United States. The northern states added the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment give them rights to to be citizens, and the 15th Amendment gave the right to vote.

Northerners took part in helping reconstruction slowly fade away. Amendment thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen were created to support reconstruction. The thirteenth Amendment was made to put an end to slaves and officially made slavery illegal. Amendment fourteen was constructed to give civil rights and citizenship to all African Americans. Last, the fifteenth Amendment make the action of denying someone to vote because of their race illegal.

The Course of human events has once again arrived at a time when consideration must be given by the people to dissolving the political bonds connecting them with another, and to again assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Natural Laws entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the people should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed to protect feed people’s natural rights. This process of protecting was the whole concept of “reconstructing America”. At first a majority of the states did not agree with these new laws, but by 1870, all of the former Confederate states had accepted them and were admitted into the union once again. Once Reconstruction ended in 1877, society slowly went back to a strong racist background and former slaves were once again in servitude. This time, even harsher discrimination against the Blacks were introduced by enforcing state segregation. Reconstruction only caused the nation to become worse.

The United States of America was founded upon five founding ideals: liberty, opportunity, rights, democracy, and equality. All five of these ideals have shaped what kind of country the United States has become and what it stands for. By definition, equality is “the state of being of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities.” The United States has always been changing the availability of equality, depending on the time period. Compared to the founding period, every American has the same rights and same opportunities. This was not always so, however, and some groups of Americans had less rights and opportunities than others. One group in particular that had different levels of equality throughout history was African Americans. While African Americans do have equality nowadays, this was not always the case. It had taken centuries before African Americans could have the same rights and opportunities as other groups of Americans. Fortunately, this has led to equality amongst all Americans.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln set the stage for the abolishment of slavery. In the wake of the war, the Confederates had lost and 11 states were forced to rejoin the Union. As a result there were now a lot of freed black slaves. For this reason, Congress had the task to make their freedom official and addressing their rights. Therefore 3 amendments eventually developed called the reconstruction amendments. First up was 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Southern states opposed the 13th amendment and as a result the attempted to suppress the blacks by creating laws that limited the civil rights of blacks. This was their way of continuing control over their former slaves, but this was unacceptable to many. So the solution from

America was founded on the idea of a social caste system. From the start of this nation, African Americans were placed at the bottom of this system. After Jim Crow, the criminal justice system took the place of this overt social separation. Minorities are wrongfully convicted day after day as perpetrators who do not abided by the American founding principles. From hundreds of years ago, African Americans were the backbone or the labor behind the masterpiece of this nation. Social status of this country truly separates the wealthy from the impoverished.

In the mid 19th century racism had started to occur. Then it quickly transferred into slavery where than African Americans were slaves to the whites. The African Americans were not brought to America by choice but because the whites decided to use them for slavery. Some whites would trade them for any house supplies they needed, and they were sold to the colonist of Europe. Where then they had labor work that needed to be done, African’s did not get a wage for doing this labor. There was a law that Africans were not considered humans, but objects that worked. When Americans won the land from the british, Africans were not exactly free from slavery. Slavery was a hard subject to talk about but they still did not receive the respect they needed. They were not even

As stated in the first sentence of the second paragraph in The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Many groups of Americans such as African Americans, Native Americans, and women have been denied the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – which is why the phrase “all men are created equal” is a phrase that has been used loosely, as it was often contradicted throughout history. Liberty is the power to freely do and chose what one wants to do. As mentioned before women, Native Americans and African Americans have been denied the right of liberty; they were not allowed to do as they please, and most of the time their actions were forced (against their will). Of these three groups of Americans, the history of African Americans has disproved the phrase “all men are created equal.”