Summary:
Equality, liberty and the right to personal pursuits may be written in the Declaration of the Independence. However, these rights have not historically been secured by blacks; and there is question as to whether they have xecured them now in practise. The race issue in the United States has a long history which mixed thorns and roses.
Have you seen a book called Roots? If you have read it, you must be impressed by the miserable life of the black slaves which is described vividly in the novel. With the increasing demand for Southern cotton industry, many people from Africa were bought to the New World against their will to work as forced laborers. These African men, women and children were shipped in foul-smelling and crowded conditions to start their long and bitter slavery life. Meanwhile, it also initiated the search for freedom and equality.
For a long period of time the black slaves were controlled by several brutal means. However, forced to work for long hours, they managed to establish their own churches, develop their own music. And they also expressed their desire for freedom in some way such as "run-away", but such resistance was always brutally broken down.
For the black Africans, the first triumph in the search for freedom and equality happened in 1865. It was in that year that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution made the abolition of the slave system official. Prior to this event, the conflict over slavery between the Southern and Northern states eventually drove the nation to the Civil War in 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation made by President Lincon and the Northern states, with the aid of the black volunteers, won the victory and freed the slaves.
With the passage of time, however, the black people gradually realized that the abolition of the slavery didn't bring them equal treatment. A civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, describes the situation in his famous speech: ."..Negro is not free. The life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination...." Most blacks in the South could not eat at some eating places. There were separate areas for black people and white people in public places. And there were also separate schools for black children and white children. Racial separation was a part of institutions at that time.
In the 20th century, black people dissatisfied with such treatment and began to struggle for the equal rights. In 1954, they scored another triumph. The famous cases, known as Brown versus the Board of Education, started the slow process towards desegregation. The Rev. Brown and some other black parents wanted to send their children to the school near their homes. But the state court confirmed the rule of "separated but equal" and prevented their children from attending the school nearby. They decided to continue their efforts and appealed their cases to the Supreme Court. After justices' careful consideration, they announced that the separation in public schools was ended.
By this time black people had been taking action themselves rather than putting up with unequal treatment. A crucial step in the search was the 1955-56 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. A black woman, Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to give up her seat in a bus to a white man. Then Martin Luther King and other leaders organized a city-wide boycott of the local transit company. Before long, they were also thrown into the jail. But, later, the Supreme Court declared that laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional.
This spontaneous bus boycott was considered to be the true beginning of the civil rights movement, whose goals was to end segregation laws completely. Moreover, it started the new era in nonviolent resistance to discrimination.
During the first half of 1960's, such civil rights organizations as SCLC (the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) founded by Mr. King, CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC ( the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), organized millions of blacks and whites to participate in demonstrations and use "sit-in" tactics and "freedom rides" and so on.
Among these demonstrations, Greensboro Sit-In might draw the most attention, as it promoted the civil rights movement to spread all over the United States. In 1960, four freshmen from a black college in Greensboro were refused to be served at a lunch counter. But they continued to sit there in order to resist the segregation law openly. Later, more and more students joined them. And by the end of 1960 many eating places were open to black people. And in the summer of 1963, a famous speech "I have a dream" delivered by Martin Luther King in Washington D.C. was a milestone in the search for freedom and equality. Some years later, all the legal barriers to equality to which was referred in his speech were gradually declared unconstitutional by the Federal Government and the Supreme Court.
While many progress had been made in the search for freedom and equality, some backwardness also occurred. In the first half of 1960's, some black activists, tired of watching black people beaten, turned away from nonviolent methods and armed themselves to fight against discrimination and racism. In the summer of 1965, riot broke out in Los Angeles. Buildings were burnt, stores were robbed and even some people were killed. And "1968 was another violent year." (Zhu Yongtao, 1998 ) In April Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated as he stood on a motel balcony. It aroused black people's indignation. There was violence happening in 125 cities and 28 states.
"The current status of black Americans presents a mixed picture. The elimination of legal barriers to their advancement has been a major gain, but institutionalized discrimination is still rife."(ibid)
In recent years blacks have played more and more important role in every aspect of America from economy, education to politics. For one, increasing numbers of black people become prominent in sports and entertainment. A good example is that, in the 74th Annual Academy Awards, Black people Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won the Best Actress and the Best Actor respectively. Likewise, in some states, the political influence of blacks is unprecedentedly enhanced. They are now a major voting bloc. While many blacks, perhaps as many as a third, have worked into the middle class over the past decades, other blacks have been left in the ghetto. They are living in an environmental of poverty, prejudice, crime, crowding, drug abuse and disease. And it is obvious that the governments have difficulties in coping with these problems.
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood....I have a dream that my four 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." Two score years ago, Dr. King described his nice dream and devoted himself to realizing it. Forty years later, the efforts of both black and white are needed to continue the great cause.
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