White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

It is almost impossible for myself as a privileged, upper-class white male to understand the prejudice and blatant racism that many African Americans, such as Ms. Summerville, have to endure, just because of the color of their skin. It is nauseating that for how far society has progressed, large groups of people are…

freedom and a hope for a better life to the African American community. Three decades later, the idea of a better life had been forgotten. Instead, the Black Americans had begun to endure their suffering, pretending that the unfair laws created by the White Americans were fair. Paul Dunbar describes in his poem, “We Wear the Mask,” the roles that African Americans began to play in life in order to survive. In his poem, you are able to understand the pain, fear, and hope that comes with the…

The golden legacy of Hollywood birthed such a strong approach to narrative and visual storytelling that it went on to become one of the most dominant styles of filmmaking worldwide. Hollywood’s foundation, however, was contaminated with a strain of racism from the beginning with one of its initial major films, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. With the discriminatory portrayal of African Americans, this Hollywood product would become a significant influence of discussion and mindset for…

The police, town residents, and the Ku Klux Klan worked hard to keep the African Americans in the low society. They were oppressed from improving their lives. In addition, when the three civil rights employees went missing (2 Jews and one African American) during a campaigning of registering African Americans to vote. Therefore, other Anglos attempted to assist with disclosing information of the missing individuals, instead, they were beaten by the police or Ku Klux…

ratified, granting black men the right to vote. Many white southerners opposed efforts to aid and protect emancipated slaves and formed groups to intimidate them and prevent them from advancing socially, economically, and politically. Foremost among these groups was the Ku Klux Klan, which committed violent and vicious crimes against blacks in the name of protecting the "purity" of the white race. "By whippings, rapes, the…

Jim Crow laws were used to racially desegregate former slaves from white society. This form of discrimination lasted from 1876 to 1965; almost a decade of oppression. Simple things like eating at a restaurant would have some form of Jim Crow. African Americans would not be served at white owned restaurants. In special occasions some blacks would be served throughout the back door; as if they were animals. In the minds of whites, African…

literature, white Protestant women attempted to gain equality within their sphere of achieved status of a fraternal hierarchy. Through Kathleen Blee’s extensive research and publication of Women of the Klan, a wealth of information can be obtained regarding women’s roles in politics, education, and…

there is a Confederate memorial that is on the side of it. Confederate monuments evoke southern pride and preserve Confederate memory throughout the South; however, the NAACP states the Confederate monument at Stone Mountain is a glorification of white supremacy. As Tony Horwitz described it, “the largest hunk of exposed granite in the world, the dome shaped mountain poked up from Atlanta’s wooded perimeter like a very, very bald man in a crowd.” At Stone Mountain there is a Confederate…

delegates in the constitutional conventions and positions in almost every type of public offices (Brinkley 363). By holding such offices, it became possible for black voices to be heard easier through the word of black officials in a historically white government. Although, this step forward would not have been feasible had it not been for the publishing of the Fourteenth Amendment by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction in which American citizenship was redefined (Brinkley 358). It was this…

After the Civil War, the Congress and the President had bitter disputes about how to bring the north and the south together and unify our country. There were further battles between the north and the south, which caused great racial tensions between whites and blacks. To further compound the issue, Congress passed laws, but then did not enforce them fully. America today is still dealing with the aftermath of the feud between the north and the south and Reconstruction. Racial, political and…