He ensured that the African American community had an equal opportunity in society as the other races in America. Martin Luther King dedicated his time to organizing campaigns, boycotts, and marches to bring awareness to the racism problem in America. I can agree that Dr. Martin Luther King struggle was an advocacy due to the obstacles that he faced during the time of the Civil Rights movement as well as the continuous racism of modern day society. Dr. Martin Luther King was successful in many ways with his advocacy to a good society, but as the years went by there were also flaws. I say that he was successful because he was able to get changes done in America for African Americans.
Since 1865 when the United States abolished slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the Black population of the US had become a fairly mobile group and gradually started to emigrate from the South to the North of the country. Later on, a rural economy crisis hit the South and World War I broke out in Europe causing a major labor shortage in the North. Consequently, the population shift began to increase leading to the so-called Great Migration in 1915. After World War I, the pace of the migration substantially increased, leading thousands of blacks to settle in many northern cities, such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. However, the most popular destination was New York, precisely Harlem, which was to become
Their performance in education and the permission of the white expressed the alternative attitudes of the white to the African Americans. The relation between two races also became less intense due to the appearance of a few interracial marriages. However, the iniquity still existed in lynching cases and employments. They experienced violence and had less opportunity to get good jobs as white. Although the equality has not been accepted widely among the native Americans, more or less the black received positive attitudes of the white which help them gained initial success in life.
There are many familiar names associated with the civil rights movement such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Malcolm X. All of these people played a huge part in helping blacks obtain what they wanted, but, unfortunately, many fatalities were also a result of what was taking place. Finally, in 1968, after a long-fought battle, the black community finally accomplished what they had been hoping for and this marked the end of the civil rights movement. Many acts were passed in congress along the way that prohibited the discrimination of others in schools and in the workplace, protected the right for blacks to vote, and gave all races an equal housing
It was the hope that this exhibit would give one a holistic image of life and culture during the Harlem Renaissance by exploring different aspects of it. This event is considered to be the largest shift in African American culture that occurred during the 20th century as African Americans from across the country began to discover themselves and personally define what it meant to be “black”. This time period also marked the beginning of a shift in white recognition and acceptance of African American culture as whites across the country joined their black counterparts in enjoying jazz music and black literature. However, such a change didn’t mean that racism and racial prejudice were erased entirely. Such problems remained prevalent throughout the Harlem Renaissance, though their effects were limited by the sheer size and power of such a movement.
E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington debated whether to confront or appease racist attitudes in the United States. As segregation regimes took hold in the South in the 1890s with the tacit approval of the rest of the country, many African Americans found a champion in Booker T. Washington and adopted his self-help autobiography, Up from Slavery (1901), as their guide book to improved fortunes. Washington portrayed his own life in such a way as to suggest that even the most disadvantaged of black people could attain dignity and prosperity in the South by providing themselves valuable, productive members of society deserving of fair and equal treatment before the law. A classic American success story, Up from Slavery solidified Washington’s reputation as the most eminent African American of the new century.
The N-word in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn also preserves history in a sense. It shows new generation how African-Americans were treated so poorly and how they were thought of too. They were thought of as uneducated and stupid and they also didn’t have the right to any social, economic, or political rights because of this. If the N-word wasn’t in this book or if it was ever removed it wouldn’t actually display how African-Americans were seen or treated. Other races were always thought to be better simply because of the society.
The involvement of younger people in the Civil Rights Movement, like that of the SNCC, initiated an understanding that equal rights for blacks was not impossible. The SNCC created a valuable space for black people to create monumental steps on the path to better rights, “SNCC organizers drew equal inspiration from the self-determining cultural practices of black southerners “ (P.56) With official reprimands towards unfair rights, the SNCC was able to grab the attention of both whites and blacks. The SNCC had Ella Baker, “Two years earlier in the summer of 1963, Bernard Lafayette, a veteran of the Nashvile student movement, and his wife, Colia, a Mississippi organizer who had worked closey with NAACP leader
In the 19th century, slavery and the Reconstruction was a sore subject for the South. Reconstruction forged civil rights for African-Americans, but once the North’s influenced waned in the South, the South terrorized African-Americans and blocked them from accessing their newfound rights. While Reconstruction may have brought civil rights, those rights were quickly squashed by the South’s racism. Even after certain freedoms were securely gained, every new attempt to make African-Americans equal to the white populace was contested. A large group of people were happy to see slavery ended and civil rights rise.
Key writing technique that King uses so masterly is anaphora. Not only that he catches the reader’s attention this way, but he also puts an emphasis on the long period that the black community has been suffering. Repeating that one hundred years later Negro is still not free, that he is still crippled by the manacles of segregation makes the reader feel closer to the subject and makes him feel a part of the struggle that the black community was going through. Using anaphora is too obvious, but King managed to repeat some other key ideas as well. The word freedom is used many times in this speech giving us the idea that freedom is the main theme.