For the African American community it was a period of terror, neglect, disenfranchisement, poverty, and veritable slavery to a white power structure. However, in this age of desperation and despondency, the African American community prevailed through perseverance and self-actualization by resisting an oppressive racist government. By finding their origins and cultural roots the black community was able to revitalize their culture and society despite the intense opposition of white America. Consequently, this process of revival assisted many African Americans in regaining their humanity, rights, and agency. Furthermore, this resistance over the course of several decades established the foundations for the modern civil rights movement that toppled this oppressive and racist…
Oral History Project: Isaac H. You must go to the second floor; Do you take the stairs or the elevator? The stairs require more effort while the elevator brings one to their destination with less effort. By the first migrants choosing the stairs, it resulted in the next generation having a choice to take the elevator. The first migrants dealt with many hardships and obstacles when they arrived to the North. The risks those migrants took allowed the future generations to go through their experience with migrating with an easier transition.…
Essay # 2 This paper is about how key Progressive Era leaders helped change America. This paper will show the roles that Robert La Follette and William Edward Burkhardt Du Bois had during this time. Both of these leaders were at the forefront of the Progressive movement, though they each lead drastically different paths, just like many other key leaders. This movement started on an individual levels, with those individuals being negatively affected by big industry, political machines and other social injustices that were being pushed against average citizens and minorities.…
King’s letter was not an innocent appeal, it was designed for manipulation. First, he defended his very presence in Birmingham by taking advantage of the patriotism that brought citizens from every state together to be American. He then listed in vibrant detail the injustices, past and present, heaped upon the backs of the African American race. King stood behind the civil disobedience that his group practiced with an explanation of his meaning of “unjust laws.” He refuted the claim that he and his followers were extremists by twisting the definition favorably in his direction.…
Agree ‘em To Death and Destruction Ralph Ellison’s short story “Battle Royal” illustrates the pessimistic and ultimately futile nature of Black resistance to institutional oppression. The text utilizes the perspective of the Black narrator to convey the overt as well as subtler forms of violence perpetrated by white society. Paragraph 60 utilizes the language of the M.C. to demonstrate the subtle ways in which relations of power are constructed between racial groups. The repetition of the word gentlemen to describe the audience, creates an ironic juxtaposition with previous scenes of drunken and violent debauchery - revealing the self-justifying perspective of white men. The language of the white characters constructs a dismissive attitude…
W.E.B. DuBois is generally regarded as one of greatest African-American scholars and civil rights activist in American history. But one issue troubling historians is their personal portrait of DuBois in their works. No one questioned his resume, the brilliant African-American scholar, author, and civil rights activist during the Progressive Era. In the discussion of DuBois, one controversial issue has been a debate over his personality. One the one hand, some historians argue that he was an elitist intellectual, contradicting, and his solutions to race relations were unrealistic.…
Brandon Avendano APUSH 03-12-18 P4 Short Answer Rewrite 3. During the 1960s and 1970s, the US experienced a wave of social movements, ranging from gay rights to latino problems. These movements all sought for change and got backlash from not only other groups of people, but from the government itself. From all of the movements during this time, the Black Panther Movement experienced the harshest response from the government. The movement began for the advocacy for a black history class to be taught in Merritt College, however, it truly sparked in response to Malcolm X’s assassination and the killing of an unarmed person of color in San Francisco.…
“For the dominant Southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in bitter resignation.” [Document I, WEB DuBois] For the most part, the Progressives and the federal government brought change to society. Unfortunately, there was not much change regarding African…
The Black Panthers believed that this could only be achieved using “black power” to stir action among black communities and by having “black people… define their own goals” rather than letting their futures be determined by white people (46/65 doc. readings topic 5). Nonetheless, the peaceful actions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the aggressive actions of the Black Panther…
The Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPPSD) whose beliefs followed the practices of Malcolm X was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. It started as a political grass-root organization with a hand full of members and over time expanded into a national and international party. However, by 1980 the Black Panther Party of Self Defense was an Oakland- based organization again, with no more than twenty-seven active members and by 1982 the party came to an end. I am arguing that due to Huey Newton taking on much of the Panthers power within the organization and the governments covert operation ‘COINTELPRO’, launched between 1968 and 1971, both had a huge influence in the quietus of the Black Panther Party…
Over the past 140, there is no other race that has endured as much physical, mental and emotional suffrage like African Americans. The period from the 1880’s to World War II is often called the Nadir, the lowest point in African American history, because of the oppression and discrimination. African Americans faced gruesome obstacle yet this era was so promising. Films like “Many Rivers to Cross – Making a way out of no way” and “WW2: The US 761st Tank Battalion” illustrate how African American thrived though a period that intended to subjugate them.…
Living in a time of racial inequality, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. address the need for African Americans to strive for equal human rights. They show the importance of movement through their purpose, audience, and…
In his Niagara Movement Speech, Du Bois (1905) says, “We will not be satisfied to take one jot or tittle less than our full manhood rights. We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.” Such a viewpoint expresses with what indomitable resolution and tenacity Du Bois employed towards fighting for black rights. Throughout the twentieth century, a common pattern to notice is that calls for civil rights for blacks were not formed as as result of organic, proactive government action but rather government reaction to the calls of prominent pro-black movements. For instance, the Brown v. Board of Education decision was largely a result of the efforts of the NAACP which DuBois helped…
The spread of the Black Nationalist belief unified African Americans across the nation to bring about change. The Ten-Point Program was a list of the platforms that the Panthers felt that they needed to change within the black community. The Black Panthers sought out to protect the community from police harassment and brutality and serve the communities that were poverty stricken and needed support. The Black Panther party was the biggest threat to the internal security of our nation. This showed the potential power African Americans could have in the United States if unified.…
In his speech “We Shall Overcome,” Lyndon Baines Johnson addresses Congress on his proposed Civil Rights Bill, arguing against the deliberate oppression and denial of the most basic rights to African American citizens because of the color of their skin. Johnson unites his audience by appealing to American patriotism in order to create an image of a strong united group of people, himself included, that must fight for their common values. He creates a common hero of the oppressed African American people and highlights the great magnitude of their suffering in order to convince his audience that they must be helped. He concludes by directly calling Americans to action by creating an “us versus them” mindset, establishing a positive tone towards…