How Did Martin Luther King Jr Influence The Black Consciousness Movement

The Freedmen’s Bureau was started to help blacks be integrated back into society, and to teach them. This group was created by the Federal government. Radical Southerners did not like this idea at all. In return, they created laws called the Black Codes to oppress African Americans. These acts made sure the former slaves signed labor contracts, and they would be fined or forced into unpaid labor if they didn’t.

Thurgood Marshall played a part in the change through his rulings on the Supreme Court and by helping defend others like on the decisive Supreme Court case “Brown v. The Board of Education”. As Marshall stated once "The position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment . . . In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a state interest of the highest order. To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society" (“The man who turned racism into history THE LAW’If white supremacy has subsided in the United States, it’s largely due to Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court.”, par 10). African Americans were mistreated, viewed as lower class, and were not equal in the eyes of the people or the law.

Until 1865, the enslavement of African Americans was legal in the United States (History.com Staff). Most of the nation believed that African Americans weren’t equal to Whites and could be treated as property. Even after slavery was abolished, these racist ideals were ingrained in the minds of most Southerners. In the 1930s, racial ignorance still caused society to believe that African Americans were sinful and a lesser race.

When the narrator was in Harlem, the narrator garners a better articulation of himself. The Brotherhood, which is a fictional version of many civil rights groups that sought to achieve social and economic equality, held many acts and speeches. The narrator was at one point the leader of the Harlem division, which shows a similarity to Nation of Islam. The narrator was peaceful, like Martin Luther King, but his competing ally, Ras the Destroyer was more aggressive, like Malcolm X. He believed that they had to “fight for the liberty of the black people” (Ellison 375) and that the power must be placed back into the hand of black folk in order for them to form their own identity. Ras evened envisioned the identity when he highlights “black intelligence” (Ellison 375).

On that note; does ‘Black Lives Matter’ mean that only black lives matter; or is it the concept that Black lives mattering is a precondition for all lives mattering? This paper will discuss in the rationality of the movement. The movement was created by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for Trayvon Martin’s death. It underlines the “racism and policing that shatters the illusion of a colour-blind , post racial United States” (Keeanga-Yamahtta, T., 2016).

Over the existence of the United States, blacks have had to face oppression due to the prejudices views held against this. America views every black person as the same and judges them based on the actions of others. It is for this reason that all blacks are judged based on the book of a cover without being able to show the world who they really are. As Norman Podhoretz stated in his Essay “My Negro Problem - and Ours,” “growing up in terror of black males; they were tougher than we were, more ruthless...”

Reconstruction a Failure or Success? Throughout the years, America has gone through many different political changes. Many presidents selected with different plans for our future. Sadly, many of those objectives have failed or came to an end.

The crowd cheered and roared when these words were delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. during his iconic Washington march speech in 1969. This was the time when America found itself torn apart in the racial conflicts. During the Civil Rights Movement, it was evident that not only black Americans but also many white Americans opposed the African American oppression. One such personality was John Howard Griffin, a Texan Journalist who documented his experiment of experiencing life as a ‘negro’ by deliberately turning his skin black through pigmentation and other medical procedures. The product that emerged out of his experiment is a book called Black Like Me.

The author, David Smith, discusses the topic of racial issues from the 19th century. During this time period, even abolitionists treated black people as lesser people than themselves. Smith describes how this book displays the discrimination of black people, and how even when slaves gain freedom, society does not allow them to feel entirely “free.” He also defines the term race as a term one uses to undermine a different group of people. In the 1800s, many saw black people as inadequate and simpleminded, Twain introduces Jim as a sympathetic and caring man.

This stereotype of the black people looked down on was started by the colonization of the southern hemisphere, referring to South Africa. The black South African were identified as barbaric and not able to rule or govern their own country. This lead to the oppression of the black race by the white so “superior” white race. This has the political ideology that was and still occasionally demonstrated in the media.

Black codes came into the picture after the civil war. Black codes were mainly used to put black people into a position as similar to slavery as possible. Later, Jim Crow laws came into America. They were used as a way to continue oppressing and separating black people. For hundreds of years, there have been countless laws made to justify devaluing black lives and protect the legality of slavery.

The need for blacks to have their own so called justice against prejudice in a nation they felt were not supporting them in becoming an equal part of a world which had struggled for the rights of blacks since slavery. The Black Panther Party for Self Defense were perceived as a militant organization unlike the Ku Klux Klan. Many of those in political power felt that the panther’s organization was the next uprising for blacks following Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X for civil rights. Huey Newton followed the approach of Malcom X in trying to achieve that all black were self-contained and become a working product of society.

This is shown by the creation of radical groups such as the Black Panthers who have sworn an oath to take care of their fellow “black” communities, while swearing an oath to hate towards all whites and even doing things such as beating/killing people who are white because of how Africans were treated in the past. Nobody, not even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, could have expected that after abolishing segregation, and Jim Crow that so much hatred could be released towards each other. The reason that segregation has kept people in poverty, is because due to their attitudes towards other ethnicities, it keeps them from advancing and life and keeping hold onto things that were a mistake and shouldn’t have been done; but they don’t feel like they deserve to be forgiven which is a sad shame for people. Once people are able to forgive each other and can forgive themselves, they will begin to get out of poverty and provide for themselves; and they can begin to get along with others which will lead to the manifestation of a society where people won’t feel hatred towards each other and could escape the deeps grasps of poverty. Also, when people begin to not feel hatred towards each other, this begins the actual dream of world peace, but can’t be achieved because of the indifference between them.

Two black activist W.E.B Dubois and Booker T. Washington had different perspectives about African American education to overcome economic and social problems such as lack of education, racism and unfair laws. Booker T. Washington opinion was for education for African Americans were for them to show themselves as productive in the society. W.E.B Dubois thought that black education should be primary and the black children should accept white supremacy. The challenges that blacks faced in the late 1800 's early 1900 '2 were blacks were enslaved in the south were they lost citizenship, voting rights and working in skilled jobs because they were looked at like a threat by the whites.

leadership. The Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Act formed a legal basis to end the segregation and discrimination that has been happening in the United States. Malcolm X influenced disparate wings of the black movement. King influenced the non-violence act to the younger African-American generation to show them that violence just causes more of a problem. The radical faction of the "Black Power" movement accepted his positions on African identification, neocolonialism, black control of the political economy of black communities, and Afro-American self-defense.