Since the Reconstruction Era was after the civil war which abolished slavery, many “blacks relished the opportunity to demonstrate their liberation from the regulations, significant and trivial, associated with slavery.”[1] One big difference between the African-Americans being slaves and free, was the fact that they were legally allowed to vote. Frederick Douglass, a former slave during this time, said, “slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.”[2] This shows how important it was for African- Americans to be able to vote during this time. It was a major symbol and representation of how free they are. This is because they would have a say in the politics, which affect the whole country. Foner describes this by saying, “In…
Individual African Americans were achieving success during the 1980’s. Some examples were Condoleezza Rice and Colin Power, who worked under the administration of George W. Bush. Jesse Jackson also ran for president but lost the election because of the racism.After 1961 affirmative action was established in order to compensate for the past mistreatment and discrimination. However, African Americans had mixed beliefs on the affirmative action. Some believed that this was reassuring compensation for the past mistreatments, and others believed that this implicitly encouraged the distance of African American community from American’s ideals and notion of individualism.…
Firstly, a police traffic stop in the watts area of Los Angeles, a largely black populated area, provided the spark that ignited rioting which lasted for six days, leaving thirty four dead, more than one thousand injured, almost four thousand arrested, and hundreds of buildings were destroyed. The riots was an explosion of raw anger against racism and brutality of the police, and the continued denial of basic civil rights to black people,. The embers of the watts riots are still burning.…
During the 1960’s, many African-Americans believed that civil rights should become a national priority. Young civil rights activists brought their cause to the national stage and demanded the federal government assist them and help resolve the issues that plagued them. Many of them challenged segregation in the South by protesting at stores and schools that practiced segregation. Despite the efforts of these groups and Supreme Court rulings that ordered the desegregation of buses and bus stations, violence and prejudice against African-Americans in the South continued (Meyer, F.S., 1968).…
The LA riots were the main theme for this week’s reading. Needless to say, it was a mortifying past for both the African Americans and the people of LA. The emotion explosion that accounted for thousands of injuries and billions of dollar worth of damage originated from the discriminatory decision of a court case. Rodney King, a middle-aged African American man, was pulled over on a highway for drunk speeding. He was brutally beaten by four police officers for no apparent reasons, and someone recorded the scene. The short clip soon hit the news, which shook the African American community and many questioned the legality of the police’s action.…
2. Once again, the values of the people influence society directly. In the 1800's, women had very little power. In the early 1900's, women made up a little more than half of the population of the United States. As a result of increasingly liberal opinions, the United States government was forced to give the people what it wanted, and granted women the right to vote in the 1920's. The same was seen with the Civil Rights Movement of African-Americans. Deciding that generations of abuse had to end, African-Americans decided to voice their own opinions. Once again, with increasingly liberal opinions, the government gave people what they wanted: desegregation. And it happened yet again in modern times. Homosexuals were not officially allowed to…
Throughout the years African Americans have struggled with obtaining justice and protecting their rights. However, the conflict seems to be even greater today. In the past decade multiple stories about the unjustified death of an African American has occurred. Police brutality is very popular amongst these cases. In each case the race card was also pulled, causing a lot of controversy between blacks and whites. Violent protests took place and resulted in chaos. Instead of solving the problem these acts created bigger ones.…
In 1965, almost three decades before Rodney King’s beating, a historic rebellion in the Watts district of Los Angeles broke out as the result of police harassment of motorist Marquette Frye (Marable, 90). Black residents gathered around the scene of the incident, which escalated when several members of the Frye family were arrested and beat with police batons. The crowd grew in size and anger, and a six day riot ensued in the impoverished, predominately black area of Los Angeles, causing up to 100 million dollars in damages, one thousand injured, and over 34 people dead. Both the Watts riots of 1965 and Los Angeles riots of 1992 that began at the behest of the Rodney King’s officers acquittals began in the South Central area of Los Angeles, a historically black, impoverished, economically stagnant area. A commission after the Watts riots found that “high jobless rates in the inner city, poor housing, and bad schools” were at the heart of the rebellion . However, little to nothing was done with these findings and the poverty, the disproportionate police brutality of black folks, and substandard housing in the South Central area continued through 1992 when the LA Riots…
After the American Civil War more than just a divided nation needed to be reunited. The states of the Confederacy had been broken. The destruction of their economy was total. From the insolvency of their currency, to the decimation of so much of the white male population to the sudden loss of billions of dollars of property in the form of freedom for nearly 4 million African slaves. What is more is the ex-slaves faced what seemed like insurmountable odds in trying to find loved ones and make a start in a prostate region without any real economic means or many skills that would assist them in this effort. The Southern white population would surely fight them at every step, so any improvement beyond their sudden freedom would depend largely on the benevolence of Northern lawmakers and charitable acts from liberal whites from Northern states heading south to assist them in this massive undertaking. The results of these efforts are mixed and in the end had no lasting impact, but the period of Reconstruction showed promise, but in the end failed due to a lack of political will and interest in the plight of the former slave in the South.…
The 1960s saw unrest, antiwar dissents, and a social revolution. African American youth challenged taking after triumphs in the courts in regards to social liberties with road dissents driven by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and additionally the NAACP. Dr. King skillfully utilized the media to record examples of ruthlessness against peaceful African American dissidents to pull at the still, small voice of people in general. Activism took on effective political change when there were large gatherings that resulted in the mistreatment of the protestors. African Americans or women's activists or gay people, who felt the bite of appalling political strategies, and decided to direct long-range crusades of coming together to focus their challenge with the media.…
The question of black representation among the government was addressed immediately. However the issue was under jurisdiction of President Andrew Johnson, who was a Southerner and also thought that African Americans shouldn't have a role in Reconstruction, American Historian, Robert Cruden said of Johnson, "His Jacksonian philosophy had perhaps an even greater flaw in view of the problems he confronted: it had some place for the Negro as a free man, but it had none for him as an equal"1. During the Presidential Reconstruction, 1865-1867, Johnson appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state conventions in order to establish new, all white, governments in the South. These new all white governments looked similar to the confederate governments they had replaced, In an essay by Steven Hahn he said of black representation in the south, "Outside of South Carolina, they show, blacks never dominated either the executive, legislative, or judiciary always remained under white control"2 . Johnson's third annual message to congress in December, 1867 depicted his prejudice, he said of the African Americans that they had, "shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism"3. Even though during Reconstruction there were many black people holding both federal and state offices during reconstruction.…
Rodney King was brutally beaten by four white male officers and the court’s decision was less than desirable. The majority believes that the decision was based on the fact that Rodney King was an African American man. Law enforcement did not treat the African American population in an ideal fashion during these times in Los Angeles. The court’s decision evoked major riots in the Los Angeles area that led to deaths, arrests and close to a billion in damages. The riots were not a result of Rodney King, but rather the unequal rights offered to citizens by those in charge. The decision was a breaking point for minorities that believed in unequal treatment. The riots that occurred in Los Angeles were a long time coming. Much remains contested today about the event its causes, its aftereffects, even its name. On the Internet, it is simultaneously called a riot, an unrest, an uprising, an insurrection, and a rebellion (Kim, 2012). Californians paved the way for the rest of the country. Previous protests and riots set the stage for the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The Free Speech movement of ’64 in California Universities set the way for us citizens to demand our human rights. The 1975 Watts fire also paved the way for the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. The riots were a long time coming to the city of Los Angeles, but in the…
In the United States during the 1800s African Americans had a difficult lifetime experience. They had many ups and downs between the three american reconstructive amendments, Dred Scott decision, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. African Americans fought a long time trying to gain their equality just like everyone else. One of the main things that is involved with this is the statement “all men are created equal” by Thomas Jefferson. It was clear that this statement was not true.…
In the United States there have been many social changes. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's was the most powerful and compelling change to occur in our history. The Civil Rights Movement was a time dedicated to activism for equal rights and fairness for African Americans in the United States. The people pushed for nothing more than social, legal, and political changes to prohibit discrimination and end segregation. Though Abraham Lincoln abolishing slavery was one step in the right direction, there was still serious conflict, and it did not change the perceptions that allowed discrimination to go on. The Brown vs. Board Of Education, The Civil Rights Act of 1964, and finally the Voting Right Act of 1965, are the three most powerful results…
The history of BAM, the types of entertainment, and their effects on society has the upmost impact on history today. Due to it being the only American literary movement to advance “social engagement” as sin qua non of its aesthetic. The movement broke from the immediate past of protest and petition (civil rights) literature and dashed forward toward an alternative that initially seemed unthinkable and unobtainable: Black Power.…