The Key To The Kingdom Summary
Eyes on the Prize: The Key to the Kingdom (1974-1980)
When watching the video Eyes on the Prize, The Key to the Kingdom feels as though half way through it has a completely different segment. The first segment talks about Boston, Massachusetts and its struggle for quality education of blacks while the second segment talks about Atlanta, Georgia and its fight for black progress through economic equity. I find it coincidental that the first segment is from a Northern state where the blacks are trying to regain some civil rights and then followed that a Southern state where blacks are known mainly to have struggled for their civil rights. None the less, both segments talk about the struggle for African Americans’ equality within the United States of America through some of the major things that affect everyone: schooling, jobs, and government. In the first segment about The Key to the Kingdom, it handles the time period beginning in 1954 until 1977. The most famous event that …show more content…
could have happened in 1954 was the Brown vs. Board of Education. This was a Supreme Court case that involved a little African American girl from Topeka, Kansas having to walk six blocks to take a bus to her Elementary school which was a mile away while there was a white Elementary school about seven blocks from her home. The outcome of this Supreme Court case declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional. This decision overturned the Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 which permitted segregation stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, this case was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement. Ten years after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954, the movement moved up north into Boston, Massachusetts. In 1965 a study showed that one out of four students were black, only one in two hundred teachers were black, and there was not one black principle. Parents of African American students began to organize several short term and long term protest against the school committee because of its lack in attention to the African American students. Parents organized one day school boycotts and freedom schools for a short term protest. However, they soon realized that that wasn’t going to be enough so they ten turned to bigger and stronger methods of getting their voices heard. They ran African Americans for candidates for the school committee; loosing, however, didn’t stop them. They then went to obtain a state law out-lawing racially imbalanced schools, however, the school committee refused to in force it. When that didn’t work, volunteers would move African American students to empty seats in white schools. They thought that moving children to where the school systems were putting all of its money and resources would ultimately give the black children a better education. Or the parents would have parent-run independent schooling. Juanita Wade, a Community School Teacher, states within the video, “Public education doesn’t give African American children the socialization, strong education or the acknowledgement of themselves as being African Americans. Therefore there was a community wide discussion of the build-up of institutions that did what the public schools and public educators could not provide for our children.” In the end, it was the fact that not even fifteen percent of the city were black, therefore, making them a minority and too small to influence elections or elected officials. It was also decided that the community could not afford busing all black children to white schools nor could they run an entire school system. Therefore closing that argument by stating the battle for quality education must be fought within public schools. In 1972, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leadership of black parents filled a class action suit against the school committee in federal district court. This step came at a crucial point because the African American community felt as if there was no other place to go and that this was their last resort. This last resort of the African American community changed the city in ways that were never expected. On June 21, 1974, federal district court judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. ruled that the Boston School Committee was guilty of consciously maintaining two separate school systems of one black and of one white. They were ordered to change immediately and the remedy imposed upon them was city wide busing starting in September. This however, caused some problems because less than a mile separated Boston’s poorest neighborhoods: Roxbury and South Boston. Roxbury was the notorious black community while South Boston was where chaired school committee Louise Day Hicks lived along with the center for the white resistance. Because of the dangers that this trip could impose, the Freedom House in Roxbury Community Center coordinated black preparation for the busing between those two cities. Alan Lupo, a journalist, can put the Boston white people into perspective a little better. He states that they are, “High bound, distrustful, turf conscious, class conscious, parochial city that is fully of people who didn’t make much progress over the years. They are poor people who are always in hot scramble operations and they are scared. They are ripe for a revolution and the busing did just that.” John Kerrigan of the School Committee, at one point in the movie, announces a Grand March before the federal building on September 9th. During this rally, Edward Kennedy, who is known for his pride toward Boston’s Irish community, was being protested for his support for desegregation. As a speaker during that rally stated, “Just because I am white doesn’t mean that the fourteenth amendment doesn’t apply to me either. I am white and I want my rights.” This statement made me think about all the times the blacks were looking for their justification of the fourteenth amendment and now that they received it, the whites feel as if their fourteenth amendment has been revoked. On September 12, 1974, the first day of school began in Boston. Under court order, this was the day that integration of schools was to begin. It was quiet in Roxbury with a few whites showing up for school at Roxbury High. However, crowds swarmed outside of South Boston High telling the African Americans to go home. At the end of the school day however, more trouble awaited outside of South Boston High. Buses were attacked by students with eggs and they were screaming “Black nigger go home.” Some of the African American mothers in Roxbury became upset and claimed that smaller children shouldn’t ride the buses because they had no means to protect themselves from the injustice of the white folk. Never-the-less, the black community was apprehensive and hopeful. Weeks later, the NAACP surveyed black students on problems at South Boston High. Upon review, they noticed that not a single black child knew how to spell, write a sentence or comprehend what grammar was. The fight to correct years of miss education was over shadowed by fear and violence. In October, a white mob in South Boston toke a passing black motorist from his car and beat him. A police man fired shots within the air and pulled the man to safety. Alexzandrina Young, a parent, states this subject the clearest for me. She says, “We don’t teach our children to hate anybody. We just want them to love, have a deserved education and to live decently. How can our children live decently when they walk out into the world and are called ‘niggas’? Whites in South Boston are teaching their children to hate. They say ‘oh stand beside mommy sweetie and throw a rock at the nigga!’” At South Boston High on December 11, 1974, a fight between a black student and a white student got out of hand. That was the day white boy Michael Faith was stabbed. All of the white students were able to get out of the school safely. It was the black students who were trapped inside because of the giant mob that had formed outside and wouldn’t let them leave. The mob had become so dangerous that they were throwing rocks at police roan horses and turning police cars upside down. Around 2:30 or 3 o’clock, they decided to try a tactic of decoy buses at the entrance of the school while all the black students slipped out through the back of the school onto other buses. This worked and black students and officials all got out safely. As it turns out, Michael Faith did not die after all. In the end, the schools in Boston became under ruling of the courts. Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. had the final word on the curriculum, hiring and firing along with policy. When asked if just time could change people minds, he answered, “No, time along will bring understanding that there is no alternative but to comply with the Supreme Court of the United State’s decision.” However, the greatest changes were not found in the schools. In 1977 chaired school committee Louise Day Hicks was defeated and for the first time in history, a black candidate got elected to the Boston School Committee; his name was John O’Bryant. Although in Boston, Massachusetts, blacks were a minority forced to rely on the federal courts for desegregation along with quality education, in Atlanta, Georgia, blacks had just become a majority and they fought for the black progress through economic equity. This brings us to the second segment within The Key to the Kingdom. During this segment of the movie, we go through the elected term of the first black mayor elected in a large southern city. The elections in October of 1973 of Atlanta, Georgia ended up with the first black mayor elected in a large southern city; his name was Maynard Jackson. Mayor Jackson was often not only mayor of Atlanta but also considered mayor of Georgia and neighboring states. Maynard Jackson believed that becoming the first black mayor was something you wished upon your worst enemy. He explains it when he says, “Being mayor is truly part hell. There are exaggerated black expectations of pretty much bring heaven down to earth. There is also the exaggerated white anxiety of ‘oh my goodness what are we going to do? We have a black mayor.’ I tried to move things as quickly as possible and make it fair for both races.” However, the fear in the white community was very present before and after his win. His opponent Mayor Massell published a campaign slogan that said “Atlanta’s too young to die.” Dillard Munford, CEO of Munford Incorporated, states regarding Maynard Jackson’s win as mayor, “We were very frightened in the white community. We had nothing to go on, no idea, no experience.” However, between1972 and 1978, a nationwide recession in Atlanta broke out. Many people lived off of unemployment benefits. At one point the demand for higher wages created the sanitation worker strike. But there was one problem; the city had no money to meet the demands of the strikers. Some thought that Mayor Jackson was trying to prove his hold on spending even against a predominately black union. Mayor Jackson said in rebuttal to this statement that “They believe that since I am a liberal mayor with a pro-union background that I wouldn’t dare refuse any demand that they would make.” Later that week, the Mayor told the community by televised conference that they were to report back to work as soon as possible or they were to be discharged. During this all, Jackson remained popular among most blacks and ended up winning re-election by a landslide in 1978. Mayor Jackson moved against discriminatory business practices along with hiring more minorities and women. He moved for affirmative action to be made a city policy for it was already a part of the federal policy. The affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group. Affirmative action is action taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. This caused some troubles because many businesses within the community resisted Mayor Jackson’s affirmative action policy. One of the major projects that the Jackson administration was working on from 1976 to 1980 was the construction of a new airport.
They viewed this as their crown jewel and that air port expansion was in dyer need of happening. Mayor Jackson then used this to his advantage by saying without affirmative action; no air port would take place. This then lead way to the first approved minority contract which stated that under new city guidelines up to a minimum of 20 percent minority was to participate in all phases of the works of the new airport. Finally on September 21, 1980 at four o’clock in the morning, the first scheduled flight arrived at the world’s largest passenger terminal. The Midfield Terminal of the Hartsfield International Airport was officially open. It was completed on schedule, on budget, and with a minimum of 20 percent minority participation in all of the works. Atlanta then became the second major tourist city in America, behind New York City, after the airport was
opened. However, in October of 1977, nation wide black students became worried when affirmative action in higher education was under attack. After ten years of affirmative action efforts, the number of African American students enrolled in colleges and universities had doubled. Mary Frances Berry recalls the time when someone told her that “For the first time in American history whites and blacks had the same college entry rate.” But this joyous news was soon to take a down fall when Alan Bakke, a 30 year old engineer, decided to become a doctor. Alan Bakke was turned down by 12 medical schools and twice by the University of California in Davis. He then tried to sue Davis and alleged that its affirmative action program unfairly limited his admission acceptance rate. Robert Links, the attorney for Alan Bakke, put what Alan did into an interesting metaphor, “When you bring in one person, you keep another one out.” Alan Bakke’s case became so popular that it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. This case was so popular that many people would camp out on the steps of the Supreme Court building just to gain access to one of the greatest Civil Rights Cases since Brown vs. Board of Education. Overall, the final verdict came to state that Allan Bakke was denied his fourteenth amendment right to equal protection of the laws. In addition the University of California at Davis violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And by order of the Supreme Court, Bakke was admitted into the institution. However, the underlining message given was that affirmative action was permissible but not mandatory. The courts had backed off from unequivocal support thus making it bad for minorities. In 1979, the opinion had changed on the issues of Civil Rights and the advancement towards equality for blacks in American society. As one African American woman put it, “we can’t have equal opportunity and excellence at the same time; if we were to have excellence at all that would mean the absence of black folk at every level of importance in society.”
When watching the video Eyes on the Prize, The Key to the Kingdom feels as though half way through it has a completely different segment. The first segment talks about Boston, Massachusetts and its struggle for quality education of blacks while the second segment talks about Atlanta, Georgia and its fight for black progress through economic equity. I find it coincidental that the first segment is from a Northern state where the blacks are trying to regain some civil rights and then followed that a Southern state where blacks are known mainly to have struggled for their civil rights. None the less, both segments talk about the struggle for African Americans’ equality within the United States of America through some of the major things that affect everyone: schooling, jobs, and government. In the first segment about The Key to the Kingdom, it handles the time period beginning in 1954 until 1977. The most famous event that …show more content…
could have happened in 1954 was the Brown vs. Board of Education. This was a Supreme Court case that involved a little African American girl from Topeka, Kansas having to walk six blocks to take a bus to her Elementary school which was a mile away while there was a white Elementary school about seven blocks from her home. The outcome of this Supreme Court case declared that state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students and denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional. This decision overturned the Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 which permitted segregation stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, this case was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement. Ten years after the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling in 1954, the movement moved up north into Boston, Massachusetts. In 1965 a study showed that one out of four students were black, only one in two hundred teachers were black, and there was not one black principle. Parents of African American students began to organize several short term and long term protest against the school committee because of its lack in attention to the African American students. Parents organized one day school boycotts and freedom schools for a short term protest. However, they soon realized that that wasn’t going to be enough so they ten turned to bigger and stronger methods of getting their voices heard. They ran African Americans for candidates for the school committee; loosing, however, didn’t stop them. They then went to obtain a state law out-lawing racially imbalanced schools, however, the school committee refused to in force it. When that didn’t work, volunteers would move African American students to empty seats in white schools. They thought that moving children to where the school systems were putting all of its money and resources would ultimately give the black children a better education. Or the parents would have parent-run independent schooling. Juanita Wade, a Community School Teacher, states within the video, “Public education doesn’t give African American children the socialization, strong education or the acknowledgement of themselves as being African Americans. Therefore there was a community wide discussion of the build-up of institutions that did what the public schools and public educators could not provide for our children.” In the end, it was the fact that not even fifteen percent of the city were black, therefore, making them a minority and too small to influence elections or elected officials. It was also decided that the community could not afford busing all black children to white schools nor could they run an entire school system. Therefore closing that argument by stating the battle for quality education must be fought within public schools. In 1972, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leadership of black parents filled a class action suit against the school committee in federal district court. This step came at a crucial point because the African American community felt as if there was no other place to go and that this was their last resort. This last resort of the African American community changed the city in ways that were never expected. On June 21, 1974, federal district court judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. ruled that the Boston School Committee was guilty of consciously maintaining two separate school systems of one black and of one white. They were ordered to change immediately and the remedy imposed upon them was city wide busing starting in September. This however, caused some problems because less than a mile separated Boston’s poorest neighborhoods: Roxbury and South Boston. Roxbury was the notorious black community while South Boston was where chaired school committee Louise Day Hicks lived along with the center for the white resistance. Because of the dangers that this trip could impose, the Freedom House in Roxbury Community Center coordinated black preparation for the busing between those two cities. Alan Lupo, a journalist, can put the Boston white people into perspective a little better. He states that they are, “High bound, distrustful, turf conscious, class conscious, parochial city that is fully of people who didn’t make much progress over the years. They are poor people who are always in hot scramble operations and they are scared. They are ripe for a revolution and the busing did just that.” John Kerrigan of the School Committee, at one point in the movie, announces a Grand March before the federal building on September 9th. During this rally, Edward Kennedy, who is known for his pride toward Boston’s Irish community, was being protested for his support for desegregation. As a speaker during that rally stated, “Just because I am white doesn’t mean that the fourteenth amendment doesn’t apply to me either. I am white and I want my rights.” This statement made me think about all the times the blacks were looking for their justification of the fourteenth amendment and now that they received it, the whites feel as if their fourteenth amendment has been revoked. On September 12, 1974, the first day of school began in Boston. Under court order, this was the day that integration of schools was to begin. It was quiet in Roxbury with a few whites showing up for school at Roxbury High. However, crowds swarmed outside of South Boston High telling the African Americans to go home. At the end of the school day however, more trouble awaited outside of South Boston High. Buses were attacked by students with eggs and they were screaming “Black nigger go home.” Some of the African American mothers in Roxbury became upset and claimed that smaller children shouldn’t ride the buses because they had no means to protect themselves from the injustice of the white folk. Never-the-less, the black community was apprehensive and hopeful. Weeks later, the NAACP surveyed black students on problems at South Boston High. Upon review, they noticed that not a single black child knew how to spell, write a sentence or comprehend what grammar was. The fight to correct years of miss education was over shadowed by fear and violence. In October, a white mob in South Boston toke a passing black motorist from his car and beat him. A police man fired shots within the air and pulled the man to safety. Alexzandrina Young, a parent, states this subject the clearest for me. She says, “We don’t teach our children to hate anybody. We just want them to love, have a deserved education and to live decently. How can our children live decently when they walk out into the world and are called ‘niggas’? Whites in South Boston are teaching their children to hate. They say ‘oh stand beside mommy sweetie and throw a rock at the nigga!’” At South Boston High on December 11, 1974, a fight between a black student and a white student got out of hand. That was the day white boy Michael Faith was stabbed. All of the white students were able to get out of the school safely. It was the black students who were trapped inside because of the giant mob that had formed outside and wouldn’t let them leave. The mob had become so dangerous that they were throwing rocks at police roan horses and turning police cars upside down. Around 2:30 or 3 o’clock, they decided to try a tactic of decoy buses at the entrance of the school while all the black students slipped out through the back of the school onto other buses. This worked and black students and officials all got out safely. As it turns out, Michael Faith did not die after all. In the end, the schools in Boston became under ruling of the courts. Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. had the final word on the curriculum, hiring and firing along with policy. When asked if just time could change people minds, he answered, “No, time along will bring understanding that there is no alternative but to comply with the Supreme Court of the United State’s decision.” However, the greatest changes were not found in the schools. In 1977 chaired school committee Louise Day Hicks was defeated and for the first time in history, a black candidate got elected to the Boston School Committee; his name was John O’Bryant. Although in Boston, Massachusetts, blacks were a minority forced to rely on the federal courts for desegregation along with quality education, in Atlanta, Georgia, blacks had just become a majority and they fought for the black progress through economic equity. This brings us to the second segment within The Key to the Kingdom. During this segment of the movie, we go through the elected term of the first black mayor elected in a large southern city. The elections in October of 1973 of Atlanta, Georgia ended up with the first black mayor elected in a large southern city; his name was Maynard Jackson. Mayor Jackson was often not only mayor of Atlanta but also considered mayor of Georgia and neighboring states. Maynard Jackson believed that becoming the first black mayor was something you wished upon your worst enemy. He explains it when he says, “Being mayor is truly part hell. There are exaggerated black expectations of pretty much bring heaven down to earth. There is also the exaggerated white anxiety of ‘oh my goodness what are we going to do? We have a black mayor.’ I tried to move things as quickly as possible and make it fair for both races.” However, the fear in the white community was very present before and after his win. His opponent Mayor Massell published a campaign slogan that said “Atlanta’s too young to die.” Dillard Munford, CEO of Munford Incorporated, states regarding Maynard Jackson’s win as mayor, “We were very frightened in the white community. We had nothing to go on, no idea, no experience.” However, between1972 and 1978, a nationwide recession in Atlanta broke out. Many people lived off of unemployment benefits. At one point the demand for higher wages created the sanitation worker strike. But there was one problem; the city had no money to meet the demands of the strikers. Some thought that Mayor Jackson was trying to prove his hold on spending even against a predominately black union. Mayor Jackson said in rebuttal to this statement that “They believe that since I am a liberal mayor with a pro-union background that I wouldn’t dare refuse any demand that they would make.” Later that week, the Mayor told the community by televised conference that they were to report back to work as soon as possible or they were to be discharged. During this all, Jackson remained popular among most blacks and ended up winning re-election by a landslide in 1978. Mayor Jackson moved against discriminatory business practices along with hiring more minorities and women. He moved for affirmative action to be made a city policy for it was already a part of the federal policy. The affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group. Affirmative action is action taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. This caused some troubles because many businesses within the community resisted Mayor Jackson’s affirmative action policy. One of the major projects that the Jackson administration was working on from 1976 to 1980 was the construction of a new airport.
They viewed this as their crown jewel and that air port expansion was in dyer need of happening. Mayor Jackson then used this to his advantage by saying without affirmative action; no air port would take place. This then lead way to the first approved minority contract which stated that under new city guidelines up to a minimum of 20 percent minority was to participate in all phases of the works of the new airport. Finally on September 21, 1980 at four o’clock in the morning, the first scheduled flight arrived at the world’s largest passenger terminal. The Midfield Terminal of the Hartsfield International Airport was officially open. It was completed on schedule, on budget, and with a minimum of 20 percent minority participation in all of the works. Atlanta then became the second major tourist city in America, behind New York City, after the airport was
opened. However, in October of 1977, nation wide black students became worried when affirmative action in higher education was under attack. After ten years of affirmative action efforts, the number of African American students enrolled in colleges and universities had doubled. Mary Frances Berry recalls the time when someone told her that “For the first time in American history whites and blacks had the same college entry rate.” But this joyous news was soon to take a down fall when Alan Bakke, a 30 year old engineer, decided to become a doctor. Alan Bakke was turned down by 12 medical schools and twice by the University of California in Davis. He then tried to sue Davis and alleged that its affirmative action program unfairly limited his admission acceptance rate. Robert Links, the attorney for Alan Bakke, put what Alan did into an interesting metaphor, “When you bring in one person, you keep another one out.” Alan Bakke’s case became so popular that it went all the way up to the Supreme Court. This case was so popular that many people would camp out on the steps of the Supreme Court building just to gain access to one of the greatest Civil Rights Cases since Brown vs. Board of Education. Overall, the final verdict came to state that Allan Bakke was denied his fourteenth amendment right to equal protection of the laws. In addition the University of California at Davis violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And by order of the Supreme Court, Bakke was admitted into the institution. However, the underlining message given was that affirmative action was permissible but not mandatory. The courts had backed off from unequivocal support thus making it bad for minorities. In 1979, the opinion had changed on the issues of Civil Rights and the advancement towards equality for blacks in American society. As one African American woman put it, “we can’t have equal opportunity and excellence at the same time; if we were to have excellence at all that would mean the absence of black folk at every level of importance in society.”