Oppression of Black Americans through unjust laws Essay

The Secret Power of Jury Nullification Response In the Podcast “The Life of the Law, Episode 1, The Secret Power of Jury Nullification”, Shannon Heffernan explains the often overlook power of jury nullification in the U.S. court system. She defines nullification as, when a jury is convinced that a defendant is guilty but find the defendant innocent anyway. Heffernan provides examples of cases throughout history that aid the idea that nullification among juries can potentially benefit…

African American character will be discussed in terms of how white Americans identified African Americans and the change associated with the new freedoms given to African Americans between 1800 and 1900. Although freedom rang through America; African Americans faced horrific stereotypes, unjust living conditions, and harsh discriminatory laws that made life difficult, albeit started a newfound hope for true freedom behind the color of one’s skin. When slavery was first introduced, blacks…

As America moved out of slavery into legalized oppression, and eventually toward the Civil Rights movement, several men highlighted life in their time through their writings. In comparison of William Lloyd Garrison’s “To the Public,” Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” and Martin Luther King Junior’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the reasons behind the blatant disregard for both legal and social rules are brought to light, contributing to the evolution of America as a nation. Despite…

the centuries of racism African Americans faced in the United States. From enslavement to the mass incarceration system of today, black people have been oppressed, neglected, and treated like second class citizens. Although they have been a vital part of the shaping of the United States, their contributions have often been overlooked and discredited. While there were a few short periods of positive achievement in the black community, the majority of African American history is filled with eras…

ethos when he uses himself as an example for differentiating between “unjust and just laws” (19). He…

Birmingham Jail”, Martin Luther King Jr. broke unjust laws and engaged in nonviolence direct action in order to gain equality and freedom. In “Dog Lab”, Claire McCarthy wanted to take advantage of the dog lab for further learning, but she was reluctant to attend the lab because killing a dog was inhumane and against…

Oppression is when a group of people are being subjected to unjust and cruel treatment. Both the poems The Cry of the Children by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Oppression by Langston Hughes involve oppression. Both poems express this topic in different ways. Elizabeth does it by emphasizing the appalling working conditions forced upon the children of that time. Langston Hughes expresses oppression by revealing what occurs during the oppression of a group of people and to not give up hope.…

that “shifting attention to ‘gay’ as a singular identity, rather than the multiple oppressions that most survivors of hate violence carry distracts from the intersectionalities of race, gender, and sexual oppression,”. This statement goes hand-in-hand with Macionis’ work, and makes clear how easily minorities can be ignored and forgotten. Black Lives Matter could eradicate police brutality against African-Americans and the Gay Rights Movement could topple homophobic legislation, but instead of…

tradition of oppression towards women found in most- if not all- societies. The oppression of women can be traced back into early civilizations, but why? The patriarchal society that is rooted in most countries is a form of inequality, favoring men over women. Although the issue of women oppressing other women is a topic not discussed enough, but should be. In order to understand why the oppression of women is still taking place, one must identify the groups involved in the oppression and how…

century, the asterisk is losing most of its power and validity, but in the regions of the Black Belt, the asterisk still looms over the land. It is too often forgotten how much of the Black Belt’s “land of freedom” was built on the backs of those that were enslaved. Literal enslavement for hundreds of years has turned into a new kind of confinement for minorities in the Black Belt, specifically African Americans. Historical racism had its tendrils deep-rooted and wrapped around every day…