Selma Riots

Jimmie Lee Jackson, the aforementioned martyr, was in a local café next to the jail where both he and his mother and grandfather were being beat by the police. When Jackson intervened by getting in the way of the officer, he was shot twice in the stomach by police officer James Bonard Fowler. [1] Jackson, as a result of his abdominal

Michael Brown’s shooting involves a racial tension between blacks and whites since Brown was unarmed and surrendered. In Ferguson, the majority of people are African Americans, and the majority of police officers are white. On the night of the shooting incident, Brown was walking home and confronted by Wilson because Wilson thought Brown was suspicious. There was a struggle between Brown and Wilson. According to Brown’s friend, Wilson started the fight.

The testimonies also revealed that the soldiers had been consuming alcohol prior to committing the crime. Furthermore, it was determined that Steven Green was the “ringleader” in the attack and that he was the one who had allegedly shot and killed the girl and her family. After the incident had occurred, Green was discharged from the Army because he was found to have a personality disorder. In addition, a trial witness who met Green in Iraq claimed that he had expressed “lack of concern or caring for Iraqi life versus American soldiers’ life” (Mosher, 2006, p. A13).

Recently, the biggest outrage of discrimination has been by police brutality towards innocent black or minority citizens. According to the Washington Post, 908 people have been assaulted, shot, and brutally murdered by police in 2016, most of which are native American, black, or Hispanic. The 14th amendment’s purpose is meant to protect all citizens of the United States, disregarding race, but why has no justice been served to the deaths of these innocent

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recent event regarding the Baltimore riot, an issue that I plan to examine from a structural strain theory perspective. The death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year old African American who sustained injuries and died in custody, as a result of discriminatory practice and excessive force used by the law enforcement, had initiated the Baltimore riot. According to “Damage to businesses from Baltimore rioting estimated at about $9 million”, the Baltimore riot consisted of at least twenty police officers injured, at least 250 people arrested, 285 to 350 businesses damaged, 150 vehicle fires, 60 structured fires, and 27 drugstores looted” (Wenger, 2015) within the timespan of the riot. Some would ponder why would

There are about 5,000 to 8,000 members in the U.S. today. Trial of Josephus Anderson was when an African American was charged with murder of a white police officer. The local KKK was upset because they didn’t reach a verdict, they believed that they couldn’t because some of the jury members were African American On May 17th, 2000, the FBI announced the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing was done by the KKK splinter group (Cahaba Boys). There were 4 men involved Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry. Cash was dead, Blanton and Cherry were arrested.

Birmingham jails were full, and police were concerned they weren't going to be able to contain the protesters and it resulted in them using water hoses on the mobs of people injuring many people. The protest in Birmingham left so much impact "President John F. Kennedy would later say, "The events in Birmingham... have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." " (PBS,

While Carl Lee was at home after he killed two men who raped his daughter, the sheriff came and took him to the prison for the murder of these two men. The city became divided between those who think that he should be killed because he is a murderer that belongs to the black people, and the others believe that Carl Lee should not be imprisoned on what he did because they deserved it. They have raped a little black girl which have become a case of racism murder. This issue of racism had led to an increase in racism between the black and white people who are presented by the (KKK). Actually they have caused this racism as well.

Police brutality is at its peak. In recent years police men have killed a number of innocent civilians. On July 17, 2014 one such case is Eric Gardner died in Staten island, being one of those civilians who sadly have been killed by a law enforcer. Another example is Harming students and by standers has also appeared recently, on October 27th 2015 a police officer in a high school class told a student to give him her phone and she refused.

These events caused the President to realize he could no longer avoid the issue of race. President Kennedy addressed the nation the night of the University of Alabama confrontation, he spoke of the “moral issue” facing the United States. He introduced new legislative proposals prohibiting segregation. To support this legislation 200,000 demonstrators marched on Washington for the largest Civil Rights demonstration in United Stated history.

These racially motivated police brutality issues are known to happen all across the country in places like Michigan to places like Idaho. On July 27, 1919, an African-American teenager drowned in Lake Michigan after being stoned by a group of white teenagers. The combination of his death and the police’s refusal to arrest a white man who saw this event occur and did nothing is what caused The Chicago Race Riot. When the riots ended on August 3rd, 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed and an additional 500+ people were injured. Many upper class white families were left homeless after their homes were torched in the riots.

The film Selma directed by Ava DuVernay expertly represents the struggles African-Americans and supporters faced while advocating for an end to the corrupt exploitation of the civil rights of African-Americans. The issues that African-Americans contested during the film accurately represents the sentiment of many African-Americans during the Civil Rights movement. Because of the compelling and despairingly honest depiction of the struggles that the African-American community faced during this time, the film was able to create an accurate account and the importance of the historical events surrounding the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Near the beginning of the film, an African-American woman is denied her voter’s registration, solely because she is a person of color, a woman no less. The woman’s walks away from the office dejected and resigned to the idea that prejudice will never change and African-Americans will always be treated as lesser.

Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement. If Wright were writing an autobiography titled “Black Boy”, today in 2017, about a black boy growing up in the United States, he would write about white people horribly expressing racism against African Americans, the brutality police officers perform on blacks, and the positively protesting movement, Black Lives Matter, which people engage in fighting for the rights of African Americans. During the time period of “Black Boy”, whites were awfully expressing racism towards African Americans. They would discriminate, despise, and violently mistreat them. If Richard Wright would be writing an autobiography about the life of a black boy today in 2017, he would write about whites frightfully expressing racism towards African Americans.

The Rotten Apple Theory. Police departments use the ‘Rotten Apple Theory’ to describe police deviance, police gratuity, kickbacks, bribery, and shakedowns of business owners (Police Crimes, 2005). According to the Christopher Commission’s (1991) article on police crimes, it stated that white police officers were somewhat more likely to use excessive force against African Americans and watchdog groups like the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU, 2016).