Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on segregation in america
Essay on segregation in america
Essay on segregation in america
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Chanel Evans History 301 Professor Namala Final paper May 5, 2014 The Watts and LA riots On the night of August 11, 1965 the Watts community of Los Angeles County went up in flames. A riot broke out and lasted until the seventeenth of August. After residents witnessed a Los Angeles police officer using excessive force while arresting an African American male. Along with this male, the police officers also arrested his brother and mother. Twenty-seven years later in 1992 a riot known as both the Rodney King riots and the LA riots broke out. Both share the similar circumstances as to why the riots started. Before each riot there was some kind of tension between police officers and the African American people of Los Angeles. In both cases African Americans were still dealing with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Add these three problems with policemen having a heavy hand and a riot will happen. Many of the primary sources I will you in this analysis for the Watts and the LA riots can be found in newspaper articles written at the time of these events. First-hand accounts from people living during the riots are also used. Tension between the LAPD and African American residents boiled over and had its hand in starting the Watts riots. The traffic stop of Marquette Frye made the community believe excessive force was used. Once the residents of the Watts suburb witnessed Marquette, his brother and mother get arrested they went into battle mode. The riot got so bad that the California National Guard was called to active duty to assist in controlling the rioting. The five Evans 2 days of violence left 34 dead, 1,032 injured, nearly 4,000 arrested, and $40 million worth of property destroyed. In th... ... middle of paper ... ...s. In both cases people in poverty didn’t have many opportunities coming their way. Although the riots were twenty seven years apart they both shared the same problems. People living in both communities did not have many resources available to them. In those twenty seven years, buildings in those areas were still rundown and many jobs weren’t available. Schools were still not on the same level as those in advantaged areas. What if African Americans were given better jobs and education? If they had received both the riots would not have started. They would have not felt oppressed and let anger just grow inside. Once the resentment started growing, it was only a matter of time before a riot broke out. In both riots you can see how the LAPD’s heavy hand was involved. African Americans were not receiving the same justice as the Caucasian residents of Los Angeles.
In Malcom’s speech Malcom brings up a riot in New York City caused by police brutality. Malcom justifies the riots of his peers by saying in his speech “but they gave the impression of hoodlum’s vagrants and criminals, but this is wrong. The landlord is white, the merchant is white, and in fact the entire economy of the Black community is white.” Malcolm uses this ideology to justify the rioters breaking windows and causing trouble in their own community because they are not hurting themselves; however they are hurting the white population by destroying the white’s property. Since the time of the New York riots many other riots have occurred based on the same ideology, some of which have occurred within the last few years. In 2014 the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sparked riots within the town of Ferguson and unrest throughout the nation. In this specific case it was found that the officer did not kill Brown based on race rather out of self-defense, regardless of the findings by the investigation the people of Ferguson continued to riot. In a more recent incident on April 18th 2015 in Baltimore the riots ensued because a man by the name of Freddie Gray was killed by police days earlier. In this instance the investigation found the killing to have been a murder; never the less, riots still ensued in Baltimore for multiple days protesting police
The activating occasion of the Los Angeles riots occurred one spring evening when Rodney King was driving, neglectfully and inebriated, on the Foothill Freeway. At the point when two officers timed King speeding, and started to seek after him, a fast auto pursue followed. Rodney King was on parole, and was concerned a speeding ticket, joined with his blood liquor level, would cost him his opportunity. When King was at long last cornered, numerous squad cars were included. After one officer let go two tasers into King, King professedly opposed capture and four cops started utilizing their rod to beat King into accommodation. The battle that took after included a severe beating, more than 50 hits from the cudgel, kicks from the
As it was stated in the book, many factors led up to the race riots of 1919. The single incident was a highpoint. It more or less triggered all of the actions and feelings that were preceded in the years leading up to the riot. It is amazing how the differences of a race can change in a few years. Also the importance of little factors that can lead up to becoming huge and having great implications on actions. For blacks and whites both the riot was just a built up accumulation of hostility that has been going on for quite some time. One thing can be said though that the Chicago incidents seem to be the more ruthless and aggressive when compared to others. It may have been because of the blacks’ resiliency not to lie down and to fight back. A lot of the time it causes even more hostility to brew when compared to a nonviolent approach. Nevertheless, the Chicago riots and the incidents that led up to it were monumental in status.
Chicago Riots Have you ever felt as if your government is doing the wrong thing? During the Democratic National Convention in 1968, an estimate of 5-7K protesters were not happy with the results on what was happening in the government. So a group called Yippies started an organized protest. They started to have riots in places like Chicago, where soon after the police came in and started to relentlessly beat the protesters with billy clubs.
The Newark riots of 1967 were very extreme and terrible time in Newark, New Jersey, one of the worst in U.S. history. The riots were between African-Americans and white residents, police officers and the National Guard. The riots were not unexpected. The tension between the city grew tremendously during the 1960's, due to lack of employment for Blacks, inadequate housing, police brutality and political exclusion of blacks from government.
To sum up, I do not believe that past events and attitudes have a very
Blacks were not able to go into white neighborhoods and vice versa. This created a boundary for the African American youth to leave their neighborhoods and reach those goals that are supposed to be met by society's means. These blacks had a feeling of alienation and became culturally disorientated due to the harassment from the cops. They were unable to have a sense of identity and who they really were due to the fact that there was a segregated society being created. These African Americans began to see themselves as having no value and became self hated. Blacks were shown their life has no value and they were rejected. Blacks were being arrested for non-violent crimes and drug offences. People of color have been targeted. This punitive impulse to punish folks of color is linked to our discrimination history here in America according to Michelle Alexander. When being swept into the criminal justice system, it comes hard to live a normal life and have a job to succeed a specific standard of living.
The Chicago riot was the most serious of the multiple that happened during the Progressive Era. The riot started on July 27th after a seventeen year old African American, Eugene Williams, did not know what he was doing and obliviously crossed the boundary of a city beach. Consequently, a white man on the beach began stoning him. Williams, exhausted, could not get himself out of the water and eventually drowned. The police officer at the scene refused to listen to eyewitness accounts and restrained from arresting the white man. With this in mind, African Americans attacked the police officer. As word spread of the violence, and the accounts distorted themselves, almost all areas in the city, black and white neighborhoods, became informed. By Monday morning, everyone went to work and went about their business as usual, but on their way home, African Americans were pulled from trolleys and beaten, stabbed, and shot by white “ruffians”. Whites raided the black neighborhoods and shot people from their cars randomly, as well as threw rocks at their windows. In retaliation, African Americans mounted sniper ambushes and physically fought back. Despite the call to the Illinois militia to help the Chicago police on the fourth day, the rioting did not subside until the sixth day. Even then, thirty eight
“April 26th, 1992, there was a riot on the streets, tell me where were you!? You were sittin' home watchin' your TV, while I was paticipatin' in some anarchy,” these are the lyrics Sublime uses in their song ‘April 26, 1992’ to describe what happened during the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. “First spot we hit it was my liquor store. I finally got all that alcohol I can't afford. With red lights flashin' time to retire, And then we turned that liquor store into a structure fire,” people ,running through the streets, had no pity when demolishing small businesses and taking what ever they may want from them. The streets, neighborhoods, businesses were destroyed by angry protesters. Their reasons were clear, all they wanted was some justice. A video tape of four L.A.P.D police officers brutally beating a male (Rodney King) without any sympathy was made public, which started the bomb track. “Let it burn, wanna let it burn, wanna let it burn, wanna wanna let it burn,” says the song when describing the riots. Throughout these days there was an estimate of more than 50 killed, over 4 thousand injured, and 12,000 people arrested. The damage caused in the city was about one billion dollars, damage that is believed was never fully repaired. The riots and destruction that went on for about a week that showed the people’s rage and that they were not going to tolerate the injustices committed by the authorities.
Even though whites and blacks protested together, not all of them got punished in the same ways. Even though it wasn’t folderol committed by either race, racists saw it as this and would do anything to keep segregation intact. Sometimes, the whites would be shunned, by society, and not hurt physically. While the blacks, on the other hand, were brutally kille...
Though Americans have done their best to uphold the ideals and promises that this country was founded upon, there have been times when these principles were abandoned. Throughout America’s history, Jefferson’s ideals have been violated. “Succumbing to bad advice and popular opinion, President Roosevelt signed an executive order in February 1942 ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the interior of the United States.” During this time, Japanese-Americans were stripped of their rights, forcing them out of their homes and treating them horribly in ‘concentration camps.’ Despite many of these Japanese-Americans posing no threat or possibility of allegiance to Japan they were ostracized; treated
The reason is that the cause of these riots, the racist malignancy in America, has been too long unattended.” This passage immediately stood out to me because it reminded of the very similar perspective I had received when I was interviewing my interviewee from the Oral History Project. My interviewee had lived during Civil Rights movement and had witnessed the Hough and Glenville riots, while living in East Cleveland Ohio. When I asked him if he could draw a comparison between the riots that happened in Cleveland and some of the more recent years, he answered that, “You can’t hardly separate the two. A riot is a riot. A riot is caused by people’s discontentment.” The racist malignancy in America that Malcolm X indicates Ignited these riots stemmed from (as my interviewee explained) Slavery and the Jim Crow era and the effect it had on. The civil Rights Bill attempted to fix the issue of inequality of right’s but as my interviewee, Malcolm X, and I argued, failed to address the long existing sentiment that Blacks were inherently
On July 27, 1919, a young black man named Eugene Williams swam past an invisible line of segregation at a popular public beach on Lake Michigan, Chicago. He was stoned by several white bystanders, knocked unconscious and drowned, and his death set off one of the bloodiest riots in Chicago’s history (Shogun 96). The Chicago race riot was not the result of the incident alone. Several factors, including the economic, social and political differences between blacks and whites, the post-war atmosphere and the psychology of race relations in 1919, combined to make Chicago a prime target for this event. Although the riot was a catalyst for several short-term solutions to the racial tensions, it did little to improve race relations in the long run. It was many years before the nation truly addressed the underlying conflicts that sparked the riot of 1919. This observation is reflected in many of author James Baldwin’s essays in which he emphasizes that positive change can only occur when both races recognize the Negro as an equal among men politically, economically and socially.
...te police officers of charges stemming from the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. As a result of this verdict, thousands of citizens rioted for six days. Mass amounts of looting, murder, arson and assault took place.” Riots are one of the most common forms of mob mentality and are shown in this book several times.
Enraged with the death of Jim, around 650 protestors gathered again on March 7 and attempted a march through Selma to Montgomery, ignoring Governor Wallace’s orders not to march. They again met with state troopers and a crueler response. A wall of state troopers was formed at US Highway 80 to stop the march. After refusing the orders from the police to stop the march, the troopers took action. The prot...