Let’s go back to the 1400s. As Christopher Columbus made his way to the new world, now known as North & South America, the Columbian Exchange affected the Native Americans severely; with the exchange of foods, goods, and livestock, it also brought European diseases in America (The Americans 28-29). As a result, the decreasing Native American population influenced the Europeans to replace the Natives for African slaves. They brought ten million African American slaves into America; twenty percent of the slaves died from diseases, suicide, or whippings during the trip. The remaining eighty percent of slaves worked in fields and sugar plantations or mined gold for the Spaniards. Even though the settlers made profitable goods, the African Americans revolted against their slave owners for the harsh treatment and the cruel oppression; as a result, both the South and North divided their beliefs (The Americans 76). Abolitionists, people against slavery, argued that slavery “violated human rights and God-given law” (World Book Encyclopedia 502). However, pro-slavery advocates, people who wanted to continue slavery, disagreed by citing the Bible and creating the image of the happy slave; they used passages such as Colossians 3:22 to state that slaves should obey for the glory of God (The Americans …show more content…
In response to the violence, Dr. King established a nonviolent civil right movement in order to disagree with injustice without violent tactics. Within this movement, they started the Montgomery Bus Boycott in order for African Americans to refuse taking the Montgomery buses; in advance, the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] and other groups used their salaries to organize transportation for people (The Americans 910-911). One of the leaders, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat for a white man on December 1, 1955; as a result, the police arrested her. Even though the government condemned the plan of the segregated bus boycott from continuing, Martin Luther King continued his mission to seek racial justice for all African Americans, condemning any racist remarks, stereotypes, or discrimination made against them. From his sermon Nonviolence and Racial Justice, he spoke with the clergymen of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. One point he explained is that this separation between African Americans and White Americans erupted from two main factors: “determined resistance of reactionary elements in the South to the Supreme Court’s momentous decision outlawing segregation in the public schools and the radical change in the Negro’s evaluation of identity” (King, n.p.). Dr. King explained that the South’s refusal to abolish