They were discriminated against solely in the basis of their skin color. ... Before King and his movement, a tired and thoroughly respectable Negro seamstress like Rosa Parks could be thrown into jail and fined simply because she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus so a white man could sit down. ... In some rural enclaves in the South, they were even compelled to get off the sidewalk and stand in the street if a Caucasian walked by. ... They had stood together as American blacks had never before stood together. ... Plans were made to extend protests all over the South. ...

• Word Count: 3558
• Approx Pages: 14
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The reintegration of slaves, African Americans, had failed and certain laws were set up in order to maintain the divisions between black and white. ... However, the setting of the novel was in 1830, a period called "Ante Bellum-, which was the time before Civil War and the time of slavery. Slaves were seen as dependent, inferior to the white race and without any civil rights. ... Further on Mark Twain says "All the negroes were friends of ours and with those of our own age we were comrades, and yet not comrades; color and condition interposed a subtle line which both parties were con...

• Word Count: 3258
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Lincoln won all electoral votes of every free state except New Jersey, which awarded him four of its seven votes. ... Before the 1860 presidential election, Southern leaders had urged that the South secede from the Union if Lincoln should win. ... We have sown the wind, only to reap the whirlwind. ... We have hated and persecuted the Negro we have scourged him out of the temple of justice by the Dred Scott decision we have shot and hanged his friends at Harper's Ferry we have enacted laws for his further degradation, and even to expel him from the borders of some of our States we have joi...

• Word Count: 4026
• Approx Pages: 16
• Grade Level: High School

The year before Thurgood was born, the Saturday Evening Post had this quote from a Mississippi Governor, James K. ... Then we shall be able in our legislation to recognize the Negro's racial peculiarities, and make laws to fit them." ... Though the neighborhoods were predominately black, the store owners were nearly all Jewish, and the only ones that could enter stores were those blacks that could "pass for white." ... Houston was also the fist Black lawyer to win a case before the Supreme Court. ... Before serving on the Supreme Court, Marshall served as a legal director of the NAACP...

• Word Count: 4823
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The land of the free (except for slaves) and the home of the brave (and extremely violent and repressive) inculcated racial myths within Clemens during his antebellum childhood on the Mississippi that were slowly fractured, but never completely expunged, as he matured intellectually. ... The endemic insecurity of such a society required all of its members to deceive themselves in order to survive and make "sense- within the social context they were born. ... But as evidenced throughout most of his longer works, we see Twain's continual embrace of the overtly racist, albeit internally...

• Word Count: 3141
• Approx Pages: 13
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Africans were seen as sole commodities. ... When they arrived on American soil in 1839 they were technically free people, and that's the technicality that won them their case. The Africans were never slaves but despite that the people of our country still treated them as if they were, simply because they were black. ... Black women were viewed as sex symbols; they were believed to promote promiscuity and were forced to sexually please their owners. ... When we are creating our own Greek life and organizational societies of people to consist of one sole ethnicity because we wish to identi...

• Word Count: 2862
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

As Americans, we pride ourselves on the concept that our ancestors fought tooth and nail for our freedom and we should never forget that concept. ... Black American's heeded to his campaign slogan of "Yes We Can" and invested all of their time and energy into ensuring that Obama would be instated as the President of the free world. ... According to The New Jim Crow, the racial caste system began before America was even a nation. ... Nearly two and a half centuries after slavery was introduced to the colonists, the Emancipation Proclamation declared that 4 million slaves in Ameri...

• Word Count: 6384
• Approx Pages: 26

Martin Luther King addressed the nation with his "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963, King believed in the power of natural law to propel the free flow of justice in a color blind society. ... King stated that the "Emancipation Proclamation" came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice the Negro still is not free. ... King vowed that until the Negro members of society were granted the same rights as the white man he would continue to violate those laws which were morally unjust in an attempt to bring about justice stating...

• Word Count: 2706
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

We can also read Ralph Ellison's (Invisible Man, 1952) work. ... "The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time...some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air. ... Their horror may be well conceived if we think that lots of that Negroes were found, at the end of their voyage, in different stages of suffocation; lots of them were foaming at the mouth and in their last agonies; many were already dead. ... We have to consider that frequently half of the white crew also died during th...

• Word Count: 4160
• Approx Pages: 17
• Grade Level: High School

This issue screams to be addressed by the government and abolished in American society if we truly desire our country to be "The Land of the Free," that we all know and love. ... All the while, white drivers receive far less police attention, affording the drug dealers among this group of people to go free. ... Wilkens, and his family were traveling from a funeral in a rented Cadillac when he was stopped for speeding. ... There were no drugs to be found, "We 5 were completely humiliated," says Wilkens. ... For instance, 77 percent of motorists searched on the New Jersey turnpike we...

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

Douglass' audience does not see a black man before them, but a saint. ... For Douglass, slaves were often treated worse than farm animals. ... Whippings were distributed generously, even with a lack of foundation. ... We are not all bad "they are." ... To break free from human captivity, Douglass believes that education is the answer. ...

• Word Count: 2701
• Approx Pages: 11

Emerging in the 1950's were the Black Muslims and the visionary Malcolm X. ... "Who were the militants?" ... Still, we have more young black men in prison than we do in college. The culture of incarceration has transcended prison walls, transforming the free world into a shadow of the penitentiary. ... When Davis began fighting to free political prisoners in the late 1960s, she and other activists thought incarceration rates had reached critical levels. ...

• Word Count: 3043
• Approx Pages: 12

Some of those amendments were the 13th and 14th amendment. ... In the front of the bus were seats that were only allowed to white passengers. ... Before he became a civil leader he had many problems. ... Malcolm believed that if blacks were going to be free then they would have to free themselves by using any means necessary. ... Malcolm felt that if black peoples could not use ballots to be free, like black people in the south or those in the north whose rights were hindered by gerrymandering, and then bullets were the next option. ...

• Word Count: 2726
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Before the story even begins, there is a page with only the words "Sixty Million and more": she is referring to the sixty million people who died as a result of slavery. ... For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby had died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. ... "Here", she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. ... This solid community of freed black people gives her a source of source of strength, hope, and comfort. ... So Baby Suggs, holy, having devoted her free life to harmony, was buri...

• Word Count: 3712
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

Before the story even begins, there is a page with only the words "Sixty Million and more": she is referring to the sixty million people who died as a result of slavery. ... For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby had died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. ... "Here", she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. ... This solid community of freed black people gives her a source of source of strength, hope, and comfort. ... So Baby Suggs, holy, having devoted her free life to harmony, was buri...

• Word Count: 3715
• Approx Pages: 15
• Grade Level: High School

February is Black History Month A full appreciation of the celebration of Black History Month requires a review and a reassessment of the social and academic climate that prevailed in the Western world, and especially in North America before 1926 when Black History Month was established. ... Peoples of African descent were visibly absent in any scholarship or intellectual discourse that dealt with human civilization. African Americans were so dehumanized and their history so distorted in academia that "slavery, peonage, segretation and lynching" were considered justifiable conditions. ......

• Word Count: 3305
• Approx Pages: 13
• Grade Level: High School

As we can see from many different sources available today, the points of view of slaves and slave owners on slavery were the opposite of each other. ... Obviously, from what we have heard from the slaves we can claim that this statement is not very accurate. ... As we can see the conditions of the slaves were inhuman. ... The same slave owner whom we have seen before also says in his letter to Lord Brougham that "...America found in the slave... a savage, and she has civilized him!... ... Also, we have some memories of former slaves that tell us how difficult it was to work on the cotton plan...

• Word Count: 3121
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

As we can see from many different sources available today, the points of view of slaves and slave owners on slavery were the opposite of each other. ... Obviously, from what we have heard from the slaves we can claim that this statement is not very accurate. ... As we can see the conditions of the slaves were inhuman. ... The same slave owner whom we have seen before also says in his letter to Lord Brougham that "...America found in the slave... a savage, and she has civilized him!... ... Also, we have some memories of former slaves that tell us how difficult it was to work on the cotton plan...

• Word Count: 3121
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Works of James Baldwin We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only forces that can change it. ... Through his works, Baldwin's arguments for civil rights transcend colour boundaries and stress the idea that "regardless of race or culture, we are all human beings, and should be treated as such" (http://www.galenet.com, pg. 15). ... While the role was not new for him, the activities of the 1960's were undertaken because of his reputation. ... My Dungeon Shook contains advice to a young black male who is the author's neph...

• Word Count: 2618
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In America, we may be watching our favorite TV show when a commercial comes on. ... The problem Americans have when we think about what Africa is to us, is that the media has painted an image in our head about what Africa is when we have not been able to learn for ourselves. ... Sure Americans know Africans were brought here to be slaves but what do we know about Africans? ... Indians also known as Native-Americans were here before the whites; but the only reason they are called Indians is because Christopher Columbus thought he had found India. ... They were so nice an un-harmful and very res...

• Word Count: 2957
• Approx Pages: 12

But how can we overcome discrimination while the forces that protect us are one of the major causes? ... Department of Justice report stated that in 1999, African Americans were 20% more likely to be stopped than white Americans, and police were more than twice as likely to search the car of an African American or Hispanic driver than a white driver. ... Of the nearly 12,000 full-time state court judges across the country, only 465 were African American, and 150 were Latino in 1991. In a 2000 Census, the percentage of judges who were white calculate to 83.2%, 8.8% were African American, and Hi...

• Word Count: 3114
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

It was nearly impossible for a black to live free in America, and it was even more difficult for a black to find a job. ... Not only were blacks free, they were becoming accepted as people in our society. They were even becoming accepted in the workplace. Many employers were no longer bothered by giving a job to an African-American. ... This is not possible, however, if we are to conserve racial equality in this country. ...

• Word Count: 2518
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School

We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." We need to treat the Earth how we want the Earth to treat us. ... " This reveals that the land is more to us than we think it is. The Indians believe that the land belongs to not just them but their ancestors and the people before them as well. ... These types of conditions gave rise to what we call the "task" system, where each slave would be given a job at the beginning of the day and once they finished their job they were free to stop work. ...

• Word Count: 2660
• Approx Pages: 11
• Grade Level: High School

This can be difficult because man is born free, but everywhere in chains' (- Jean-Jaques Rousseau). ... Liberalism believes that each person should be free to act as they wish, it also believes that each individual deserves respect no matter of race, religion, sexual preference, or social status. ... However before the late 19th century, social attitudes were not challenged in mass. ... Degrees were still not allowed to be taken. ... In 1850 11,000 women were in institutes of higher learning. 1/3 of enrolees in colleges were wome...

• Word Count: 4726
• Approx Pages: 19

There is evidence of this when we see that "racial thought was used to explain differences between economic and social classes, especially between the peasantry and the nobility" during the Middle Ages.# From the passage it is evident that racial thought was around even before American colonization. ... "# Carl Degler would argue that Negro discrimination began before colonization saying, "that discrimination against the Negro existed before slavery, [and] existed indeed from the very beginning of settlement... This story not only gives insight on other races but of the African race the on...

• Word Count: 3801
• Approx Pages: 15
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School