MLO 4: Secondary Cultural Knowledge
In addition to the Spanish language and Hispanic cultures, the student demonstrates a general knowledge of a socio-cultural group other than a Hispanic one or mainstream American culture. The student develops a basic understanding of the ways of thinking (ideas, beliefs, attitudes, values, philosophies), the behavioral practices (patterns of social interactions) and the cultural products – both tangible and intangible (for example, art, history, literature, music) – of the second culture.
There are two pathways by which this outcome can be fulfilled:
There are two pathways by which this outcome can be fulfilled:
- The student completes at least one upper division course whose focus is a socio-cultural group not reflected by a Hispanic culture. General areas to choose from are: literature, the social sciences (anthropology, geography, history, political systems), art history, music history and/or the second cultural group.
- With faculty approval, the student may opt for a more individual pathway, choosing to independently study, research and analyze the working components of the second culture.
While taking HCOM 346, African American Life and History, I covered MLO 4. I learned so much in that class that was taught by Umi Vaughan. He is an amazing instructor. I think I feel that way because I was never bored. He kept us busy reading every week and surprise quizzes were a common thing in his class. Participation was pertinent to get a good grade. He provided varied ways of teaching to help those that learned differently: Lectures, movies, writing on the board and students were picked on to answer his questions without students raising their hand. Other than his way of teaching that impressed I was everything I learned. I learned quite a bit about how African Americans were treated during slavery period. I will never understand how humans can hurt other humans to the point of killing them. If they were shot it would have been one thing, however, they were killed slowly by beatings, by hanging them in front of young children.
Many times African Americans were burnt in the middle of the city or hanged in the middle of the city. Other times the African Americans were hanged out of the city and many people gathered to see the person suffer. I ask myself over and over how or why the white race has always believed it is a better race. I don’t have the answer. Many times these people of color were chained outside at a nearby house comfortable house and given only rice to eat. The owner of the house was their master. For many years people of color were not allowed to go to school simply because of their color of their skin. Eventually they did get that opportunity of going to school, but it took a long time and a lot of effort and much blood was shed in the process. These people also were not allowed to congregate to worship their god in a building or public place. They had to hide in the woods.
I learned that jazz music has its roots in the African American community. These people are credited for not only Jazz music, but also gospel music, sole music and more. Many times they could not sing their music. Through their music they would express their hope for a better tomorrow, they would express their sufferings and they would worship their god. I believe that what I remember about that class covers my major learning outcome 4. I fully enjoyed it because of everything I learned even though a lot of the information about African Americans that was covered was sad. We Hispanic have suffered a lot, but the African American community surpassed us in that sense. I say we Hispanics because my culture has endured suffering too. There was a sign in Texas that stated, “NO NEGROS, NO MEXICANS and NO DOGS. If I recall correctly it was in front of or close by a restaurant. I just hope this type of behavior never repeats itself. I truly believe I covered the MLO 4 by taking this course.
Example of work done
A chronology of significant dates and
events related to African American History
1790–1863: The Enslavement of Africans
· 1793
Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to harbour an escaped slave or to interfere with his or her arrest. A slave revolt begins in Haiti and is joined by freedman Toussaint-Louverture.
An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.
http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/slaveact1793.htm
1820
The Missouri Compromise provides for Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and western territories north of Missouri's southern border to be free soil.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a congressional agreement that regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for the next 30 years.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Missouri+Compromise+of+1820
1831
William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, begins publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator.
This newspaper advocated emancipation for African Americans held in bondage.
*1831
Nat Turner leads the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history, attracting up to 75 fellow slaves and killing 60 whites. Some six weeks after the defeat of the insurrection, Turner is hanged.
It ignited a culture of fear in Virginia that eventually spread to the rest of the South, and is said to have expedited the coming of the Civil War. He is one of the black men who expressed the powerful urges of blacks to be free.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/turner/bio.html
http://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/turner.html
1834
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.
The struggle for the emancipation of slaves was known as the abolitionist movement. It was protests against slavery. With these enlightenment thinkers and religious groups like the Quakers highlighted the inhumane nature of the slave trade.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/slavery-abolished-throughout-british-empire
· 1839
Slaves revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean. After their arrest in Long Island Sound, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams successfully defends the rebels before the Supreme Court.
The Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean resulted in the first anti[slavery decision proclaimed before the United States Supreme Court in 1841. When the horrors of the slave trade were made public, the movement to abolish slavery had officially begun in the United States.
http://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5268
· 1847
Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star, an antislavery newspaper, which contributes to his break with abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.
The main idea of The North Star was that it was a way for great orators to speek out against slavery.This newspaper was a leading abolitionist.
· 1850
Harriet Tubman returns to Maryland to guide members of her family to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Later helping more than 300 slaves to escape, she comes to be known as the “Moses of her people.”
Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
The first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman, candidly describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women.
· 1863
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1.
http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/timeline?tocId=9433428§ion=252278
1864–c. 1916: Reconstruction and the Start of the Great Migration
1870
The Fifteenth Amendment
This Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
1881
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama is founded on July 4 with Booker T. Washington as the school's first president. At the Atlanta Exposition, educator Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise”
Booker T. Washington stressed the importance of vocational education for blacks over social equality or political office.
· 1903
W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.
The souls of Black fold declares that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” and discusses the dual identity of black Americans.
1903
In protest to the ideology of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois suggests the concept of the “Talented Tenth”
A college trained leadership cadre responsible for elevating blacks economically and culturally.
1909
A group of whites shocked by the Springfield riot of 1908 merge with W.E.B. Du Bois's Niagara Movement
This movement formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
· 1910
The Crisis, a monthly magazine published by the NAACP, is founded. W.E.B. Du Bois edits the magazine for its first 24 years.
Also known as the, “A record for the darker races.” The magazine stood for, “rights irrespective of race and color… the highest ideals of American democracy and reasonable but earnest attempts to gain therse rights and realize these ideals.
http://www.thecrisismagazine.com/timeline.html
c. 1916
The period known as the Great Migration begins; between 1916 and 1970 some six million African American Southerners migrate to urban centres in the North and West.
1917–35: The Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance
· 1925
The New Negro
The New Negro was an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays associated with the Harlem Renaissance and is edited by Alain Locke.
1936–59: The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
1954
On May 17 the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
1955
Lynchings continue in the South with the brutal slaying of a 14-year-old Chicago youth, Emmett Till, in Money, Mississippi. Jet magazine publishes a picture of the mutilated corpse.
The mother ordered to have open casket even though her son’s face was disfigured. She did this so that the world could see what the racists had done to her only son. The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the African American civil rights movement.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
· 1955
Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP’
She refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by a local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56.
Second Example:
Evelia Meza
12/17/2012
Dr. Umi Vaughan
Final Exam in Essay Form
1.) Why did the Black Power Movement break from the earlier pacifism of the Civil Rights Movement? What were the forms and demands of the militant black protests? What were the links between economic/social conditions and black militancy? How did the government respond? Use events from the life of Anne Moodier and information from the chapter on Black Militancy to craft your response.
Why did the Black Power Movement break from the earlier pacifism of the Civil Rights Movement?
Although the Civil Rights Movement accomplished many things Blacks believed it wasn’t enough progress. Among some of the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement were that it destroyed the Jim Crow Laws, gave access to education and it enhanced the right to vote. More issues needed to improve. The civil rights movement in the United States was about the campaign of African Americans. The books tell the story that because of their skin color; they did not have the same rights that white people had for decades. It was a time of social unrest for African Americans. After the Civil War that took place in (1861-1865) there was much prejudice against blacks and the new laws were often ignored. In the southern states Blacks were treated as second class citizens.
Then the boycott of the bus system took place when Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man. Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to lead their protest. The blacks no longer wanted to sit at the back of the bus. This Montgomery boycott was very important for the African Americans. Dr. King was a great spokesperson who spoke out on radio and television programs and urged blacks to take part in so-called freedom rides and sit-ins. Thousands including Dr. King were often put into prison for these protests. Anne Moody participated in a sit-in in a restaurant and was not treated well. Her hair and clothing were sprayed with condiments.
The formation of the Panthers was the direct result of the development of the civil rights movement which had already been in full swing for more than a decade before they were created. Desegregation of the busses, schools, waiting rooms and lunch counters was a big problem in the south that is why the Panthers arose. Not only from the police, but also from the white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, civil rights protesters faced the constant threat o of brutal attacks or even death.
Contrasting views on a strategy for black liberation began to emerge. Violence put a great strain on the movement. Stokely Carmichael was one of those people that thought that the peaceful approach was no longer working. Despite this, the guiding philosophy of the civil rights leaders - in particular Martin Luther King - remained one of civil disobedience and passive resistance. Another current came that was smaller than King’s movement. The Black Muslims arose. The Nation believed in separation instead of integration and were completely opposed to passive resistance. Their radical ideology was appealing but they refused to participate in the civil rights movement or to become involved in the activities of non-Nation members.
The Black Panther Party arose with a list of wants and beliefs. What they wanted was what any human wants regardless of skin color. They wanted freedom, full employment with a guaranteed income. The blacks wanted an end to the robbery by the white man of their Black community. The blacks also demanded decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. The other thing they wanted was education that teaches the blacks about the true history and their role in society. Why did they want this? Because they believed that if a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else. They also asked for all black men to be exempt from military service. Why? Because they believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect them. They also wanted to have the right to protect themselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary. Among other issues they wanted an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. They reminded the people that the second amendment to the constitution of the United States gave a right to bear arms and therefore believed that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense. Because black people in jails and prisons had not had a fair and impartial trial they asked that these people were set free. They also asked that when black people were brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their group of people from their Black communities, as defined by the constitution of the United States. The fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution gave a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. Why did they ask for this? Because up until that point in history black people were being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the black community. The other things they asked for were land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. The following is a piece of the, ‘I Have a Dream,’ speech which in my opinion is very deep and very easy to understand. It relates very much to what the blacks had been asking for many years.
‘…And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream…
‘… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character…’
In a few words the white race has been very mean to all races, but especially to the blacks. One does not choose to be black, yellow or tan. It is an injustice and our creator will make things right one day. He will bring justice and no one will be able to question him.
It took great people like Martin Luther King, Anne Moody, and Malcolm X to improve not change the situation for all blacks. I say improve because recently one of my friends experienced racism in another state and she is Mexican. She states they were in a restaurant her and her husband waiting for the day to become clearer before visiting the friends. She did not want to wake them up that early. A white man kept looking at them from head to toe. It made her feel uncomfortable. I told her, “Imagine being tortured or even killed because of your skin color.” That type of abuse has been going on for decades with the black community.
Works Cited
http://www.socialistalternative.org/literature/panther/ch2.html
http://www.chacha.com/question/what-are-some-accomplishments-of-the-civil-rights-movement
http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/nhhs/essays/pd6joe.htm
Many times African Americans were burnt in the middle of the city or hanged in the middle of the city. Other times the African Americans were hanged out of the city and many people gathered to see the person suffer. I ask myself over and over how or why the white race has always believed it is a better race. I don’t have the answer. Many times these people of color were chained outside at a nearby house comfortable house and given only rice to eat. The owner of the house was their master. For many years people of color were not allowed to go to school simply because of their color of their skin. Eventually they did get that opportunity of going to school, but it took a long time and a lot of effort and much blood was shed in the process. These people also were not allowed to congregate to worship their god in a building or public place. They had to hide in the woods.
I learned that jazz music has its roots in the African American community. These people are credited for not only Jazz music, but also gospel music, sole music and more. Many times they could not sing their music. Through their music they would express their hope for a better tomorrow, they would express their sufferings and they would worship their god. I believe that what I remember about that class covers my major learning outcome 4. I fully enjoyed it because of everything I learned even though a lot of the information about African Americans that was covered was sad. We Hispanic have suffered a lot, but the African American community surpassed us in that sense. I say we Hispanics because my culture has endured suffering too. There was a sign in Texas that stated, “NO NEGROS, NO MEXICANS and NO DOGS. If I recall correctly it was in front of or close by a restaurant. I just hope this type of behavior never repeats itself. I truly believe I covered the MLO 4 by taking this course.
Example of work done
A chronology of significant dates and
events related to African American History
1790–1863: The Enslavement of Africans
· 1793
Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Act, making it a crime to harbour an escaped slave or to interfere with his or her arrest. A slave revolt begins in Haiti and is joined by freedman Toussaint-Louverture.
An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.
http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/history/slaveact1793.htm
1820
The Missouri Compromise provides for Missouri to be admitted to the Union as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and western territories north of Missouri's southern border to be free soil.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a congressional agreement that regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for the next 30 years.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Missouri+Compromise+of+1820
1831
William Lloyd Garrison, a white man, begins publishing the antislavery newspaper The Liberator.
This newspaper advocated emancipation for African Americans held in bondage.
*1831
Nat Turner leads the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in U.S. history, attracting up to 75 fellow slaves and killing 60 whites. Some six weeks after the defeat of the insurrection, Turner is hanged.
It ignited a culture of fear in Virginia that eventually spread to the rest of the South, and is said to have expedited the coming of the Civil War. He is one of the black men who expressed the powerful urges of blacks to be free.
http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/turner/bio.html
http://docsouth.unc.edu/highlights/turner.html
1834
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire.
The struggle for the emancipation of slaves was known as the abolitionist movement. It was protests against slavery. With these enlightenment thinkers and religious groups like the Quakers highlighted the inhumane nature of the slave trade.
http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/slavery-abolished-throughout-british-empire
· 1839
Slaves revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean. After their arrest in Long Island Sound, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams successfully defends the rebels before the Supreme Court.
The Spanish slave ship Amistad in the Caribbean resulted in the first anti[slavery decision proclaimed before the United States Supreme Court in 1841. When the horrors of the slave trade were made public, the movement to abolish slavery had officially begun in the United States.
http://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5268
· 1847
Frederick Douglass begins publication of the North Star, an antislavery newspaper, which contributes to his break with abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison.
The main idea of The North Star was that it was a way for great orators to speek out against slavery.This newspaper was a leading abolitionist.
· 1850
Harriet Tubman returns to Maryland to guide members of her family to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
Later helping more than 300 slaves to escape, she comes to be known as the “Moses of her people.”
Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,
The first autobiography by a formerly enslaved African American woman, candidly describes her experience of the sexual exploitation that made slavery especially oppressive for black women.
· 1863
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1.
http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/timeline?tocId=9433428§ion=252278
1864–c. 1916: Reconstruction and the Start of the Great Migration
1870
The Fifteenth Amendment
This Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
1881
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama is founded on July 4 with Booker T. Washington as the school's first president. At the Atlanta Exposition, educator Booker T. Washington delivers his “Atlanta Compromise”
Booker T. Washington stressed the importance of vocational education for blacks over social equality or political office.
· 1903
W.E.B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk.
The souls of Black fold declares that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line,” and discusses the dual identity of black Americans.
1903
In protest to the ideology of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois suggests the concept of the “Talented Tenth”
A college trained leadership cadre responsible for elevating blacks economically and culturally.
1909
A group of whites shocked by the Springfield riot of 1908 merge with W.E.B. Du Bois's Niagara Movement
This movement formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
· 1910
The Crisis, a monthly magazine published by the NAACP, is founded. W.E.B. Du Bois edits the magazine for its first 24 years.
Also known as the, “A record for the darker races.” The magazine stood for, “rights irrespective of race and color… the highest ideals of American democracy and reasonable but earnest attempts to gain therse rights and realize these ideals.
http://www.thecrisismagazine.com/timeline.html
c. 1916
The period known as the Great Migration begins; between 1916 and 1970 some six million African American Southerners migrate to urban centres in the North and West.
1917–35: The Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance
· 1925
The New Negro
The New Negro was an anthology of fiction, poetry, drama, and essays associated with the Harlem Renaissance and is edited by Alain Locke.
1936–59: The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement
1954
On May 17 the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Racial segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
1955
Lynchings continue in the South with the brutal slaying of a 14-year-old Chicago youth, Emmett Till, in Money, Mississippi. Jet magazine publishes a picture of the mutilated corpse.
The mother ordered to have open casket even though her son’s face was disfigured. She did this so that the world could see what the racists had done to her only son. The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the African American civil rights movement.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
· 1955
Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, chapter of the NAACP’
She refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956refuses to surrender her seat when ordered to do so by a local bus driver, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–56.
Second Example:
Evelia Meza
12/17/2012
Dr. Umi Vaughan
Final Exam in Essay Form
1.) Why did the Black Power Movement break from the earlier pacifism of the Civil Rights Movement? What were the forms and demands of the militant black protests? What were the links between economic/social conditions and black militancy? How did the government respond? Use events from the life of Anne Moodier and information from the chapter on Black Militancy to craft your response.
Why did the Black Power Movement break from the earlier pacifism of the Civil Rights Movement?
Although the Civil Rights Movement accomplished many things Blacks believed it wasn’t enough progress. Among some of the accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement were that it destroyed the Jim Crow Laws, gave access to education and it enhanced the right to vote. More issues needed to improve. The civil rights movement in the United States was about the campaign of African Americans. The books tell the story that because of their skin color; they did not have the same rights that white people had for decades. It was a time of social unrest for African Americans. After the Civil War that took place in (1861-1865) there was much prejudice against blacks and the new laws were often ignored. In the southern states Blacks were treated as second class citizens.
Then the boycott of the bus system took place when Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man. Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to lead their protest. The blacks no longer wanted to sit at the back of the bus. This Montgomery boycott was very important for the African Americans. Dr. King was a great spokesperson who spoke out on radio and television programs and urged blacks to take part in so-called freedom rides and sit-ins. Thousands including Dr. King were often put into prison for these protests. Anne Moody participated in a sit-in in a restaurant and was not treated well. Her hair and clothing were sprayed with condiments.
The formation of the Panthers was the direct result of the development of the civil rights movement which had already been in full swing for more than a decade before they were created. Desegregation of the busses, schools, waiting rooms and lunch counters was a big problem in the south that is why the Panthers arose. Not only from the police, but also from the white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, civil rights protesters faced the constant threat o of brutal attacks or even death.
Contrasting views on a strategy for black liberation began to emerge. Violence put a great strain on the movement. Stokely Carmichael was one of those people that thought that the peaceful approach was no longer working. Despite this, the guiding philosophy of the civil rights leaders - in particular Martin Luther King - remained one of civil disobedience and passive resistance. Another current came that was smaller than King’s movement. The Black Muslims arose. The Nation believed in separation instead of integration and were completely opposed to passive resistance. Their radical ideology was appealing but they refused to participate in the civil rights movement or to become involved in the activities of non-Nation members.
The Black Panther Party arose with a list of wants and beliefs. What they wanted was what any human wants regardless of skin color. They wanted freedom, full employment with a guaranteed income. The blacks wanted an end to the robbery by the white man of their Black community. The blacks also demanded decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. The other thing they wanted was education that teaches the blacks about the true history and their role in society. Why did they want this? Because they believed that if a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else. They also asked for all black men to be exempt from military service. Why? Because they believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect them. They also wanted to have the right to protect themselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary. Among other issues they wanted an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. They reminded the people that the second amendment to the constitution of the United States gave a right to bear arms and therefore believed that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense. Because black people in jails and prisons had not had a fair and impartial trial they asked that these people were set free. They also asked that when black people were brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their group of people from their Black communities, as defined by the constitution of the United States. The fourteenth Amendment of the US constitution gave a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. Why did they ask for this? Because up until that point in history black people were being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the black community. The other things they asked for were land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. The following is a piece of the, ‘I Have a Dream,’ speech which in my opinion is very deep and very easy to understand. It relates very much to what the blacks had been asking for many years.
‘…And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream…
‘… I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character…’
In a few words the white race has been very mean to all races, but especially to the blacks. One does not choose to be black, yellow or tan. It is an injustice and our creator will make things right one day. He will bring justice and no one will be able to question him.
It took great people like Martin Luther King, Anne Moody, and Malcolm X to improve not change the situation for all blacks. I say improve because recently one of my friends experienced racism in another state and she is Mexican. She states they were in a restaurant her and her husband waiting for the day to become clearer before visiting the friends. She did not want to wake them up that early. A white man kept looking at them from head to toe. It made her feel uncomfortable. I told her, “Imagine being tortured or even killed because of your skin color.” That type of abuse has been going on for decades with the black community.
Works Cited
http://www.socialistalternative.org/literature/panther/ch2.html
http://www.chacha.com/question/what-are-some-accomplishments-of-the-civil-rights-movement
http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/nhhs/essays/pd6joe.htm