Although support in principle for these civil rights measures was not necessarily the same as support in practice, there was clearly a major shift in popular approval of at least the same principles of civil rights. ... Since the 1960's, congressional support for civil rights legislation has grown so much that labeling a bill a civil rights measure now almost guarantees its passage. ... This was evident as early as 1968, when Congress passed a law barring discrimination in housing even though polls showed that only 35% of the public supported the measure. ...

• Word Count: 478
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Set in a cramped apartment in poverty-striken Southside Chicago, Lorraine Hansberry, through slang, accounts the struggles of five black family members battling against racism to attain middle-class acceptance during 1959. After Walter Younger's business "partner" skipped town with a portion of the...

• Word Count: 1162
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

He means that since Lincoln freed the slaves 150 years ago, the blacks got nothing to complain about these days, and he hates the measures that are meant to compensate for the past discrimination. ...

• Word Count: 365
• Approx Pages: 1
• Grade Level: High School

"The Souls of Black Folk" W. E. B. Du Bois uses metaphors frequently in his writings to describe the feelings and life of being black. He discusses how people were treated, how they were looked at by white Americans, progression of the changing world, and how a Negro would not change, doing so b...

• Word Count: 519
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Dubois starts off one of his greatest works by describing the difficulty people have in asking him a particular question. In Souls of Black Folk Dubois writes about the awareness and consciousness that black people experience in America. The question he describes is how people ask, what it feels...

• Word Count: 549
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Beauty The book portrays the African American population as a culture fascinated by its internalization of a "blue-eyed, yellow haired, pink-skinned" beauty ideal. Women of color are judged according to white standards of beauty", and consequently they are always considered ugly. Hence blacks le...

• Word Count: 577
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Death Row The death penalty is outmoded and should be eliminated from our justice system. The death penalty is extremely racially biased and is not assigned justly. While advocates claim it is cheaper to execute than to support a felon for life in prison, it is actually more expensive to sentence ...

• Word Count: 571
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

In the tradition of Shakespeare's vague directive stance, he seems to have left yet another element of a play to the fancy of interpretation. In his tragedy Othello, a distinctive feature of one of the lead characters is not clearly dictated. In the movie, Lawernce Fishborne played Othello and I wa...

• Word Count: 553
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill A Mockingbird," contains many examples of prejudice and discrimination towards women, children, people of dark skin, and family backgrounds. The novel is mainly about the discrimination in a trial of a black man accused of rape. Discrimination is stated in the dictionar...

• Word Count: 778
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Burger's Identity Living in a world of conflict and betrayal, people search to measure themselves against the accomplishments of those before them. Rosa Burger in Burger's Daughter by Nadine Gordimer has always seen herself as an extension of her father Lionel's life and politics. Rosa grows u...

• Word Count: 795
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

In Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon, she explores several significant male identities by developing and metamorphisizing her male character aroubd the archetypal search for identity. Her male characters are all surrounded by legacies that haunt them throughout most of their lives, and this leg...

• Word Count: 1366
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Most of the measures they had originally advocated had been adopted: the immediate and universal abolition of slavery, the enlistment of black soldiers, the creation of a Freedmen's Bureau, and most importantly, the incorporation of the black man's civil and political equality into the law of the land (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments). ...

• Word Count: 1118
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Heroism of Atticus Finch: Essay The racism which was prevalent in many small American towns in the 1930s is expertly illustrated in Harper Lee's classic novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. Although there were several characters in the book, including the young narrator and her brother, the true ma...

• Word Count: 1341
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Did Racial Segregation Improve the Status of African Americans? For a little while now, our society has condemned any kind of racial segregation. Did it actually help the status of blacks? Howard N. Rabinowitz, who is a professor of history, believes that segregation did help blacks. ...

• Word Count: 1038
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Race, Color, and Class in the Black Community In black America today, there exists a variety of attitudes about one's race. These attitudes include superficial values about color hues and social status. In "Shades of Black" by Mary Mebane and "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" by Zora Neale Hurst...

• Word Count: 962
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict, aside from the Civil War, to occur in the history of mankind. It was a war waged on land, sea and air that lasted for approximately six years. Cities lay in ruins due to aerial bombing and hometown battles, which spread destruction over l...

• Word Count: 1278
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

The movie Separate But Equal is a true story about the myth that one race is superior to another race simply because of skin color which is called racism. Today, racism is a problem that everyone must face no matter what race a person is. Many attempts have been made by the government to ease racial...

• Word Count: 1380
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Kate Chopin's works, for example, "Desiree's Baby" and "Story of an Hour", contribute to my understanding of the south in the nineteenth century and the treatment of women in society. African Americans were looked down upon in the south during the nineteenth century and were viewed as impure based o...

• Word Count: 1578
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

It was dehumanizing and destructive effects of racism and the break down in personal relationships as a result of social pressures and the choice between secured traditions and the sometimes radical measures necessary to bring about social change. ...

• Word Count: 1754
• Approx Pages: 7
• Grade Level: High School

Despite the election of the country's first African American president, racial divisions still exist today. (Dunn). Recent reports, social media, and breaking news have been showing racism continues to thrive in America. Fed up with the law, Afro-Americans are protesting for their rights. Media's s...

• Word Count: 1416
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Max Weber suggests that racial inequality deals with status and prestige. There are two different types of status in America; Achieved status which is a status that a person earns throughout their lifetime and ascribed status which is status that a person is born with. Status can lead to social diff...

• Word Count: 1467
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Covey gave me a savage kick in the side and told me to give up took up the hickory slat with which Hughes had been striking of a half-bushel measure and with it gave me a heavy blow upon the head, making a large wound, and the blood ran freely" (566). ...

• Word Count: 1876
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Racial Profiling: "Its Time to Put an End to this Unjust Practice" It has happened to actors such as Wesley Snipes, Will Smith, Blair Underwood and LeVar Burton. It has happened to football player Marcus Allen, Olympic athletes Al Joyner and Edwin Moses, and it has happened to attorney Johnnie Cochran. Police officers stop, question and even search black drivers who have committed no crime, based on the excuse that a traffic offense has occurred. The term black Americans use for these stops are "Driving while Black" or DWB. Driving while black is a prime example of racial profiling....

• Word Count: 2664
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity."" ...

• Word Count: 2034
• Approx Pages: 8
• Grade Level: High School

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in 1929. Throughout his life, King was known best as a Civil Rights Leader. King was born into a family of Baptist Ministers. King grew up in a time when the opportunities for education and experience were not available to children in poorer urban and rural areas....

• Word Count: 2619
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School