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The civil rights movement in the usa and its social impact
Effects of the civil rights movement on minorities
Impact of the civil rights movement
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The early community work of Black Club women was not only hindered by the proponents of racism, gender inequality, slavery and thereafter segregation, but also by the deliberate attempt to ignore them from history and literature. Ida B. Wells, and Gerda Lerner were two of many Black women heroines that contributed to civil rights. Wells and Lerner significant work in the civil rights movement were recognized much later. Their legendary contributions as well as deliberate omission from historical literature will be the focus of discussion, as well as examples from the period in question, will be use to illustrate and react. Following the period after the civil war in the United States of America, there was a time of relative peace and stability, …show more content…
which conditions facilitated urbanization and the spread of education resulting in a good number of educated (Black) women (Lerner, 1974). Due to the rapid nature of this urbanization, there emerged a group of socially disadvantaged people whose condition of poverty led the able and educated women to form philanthropic organizations. Initially, this effort involved white women because no such conditions prevailed among the black community. It was not until the late 1890s, that the Black women began begin to form local federations of smaller groups, and eventually it culminated in consolidation at the state and finally the national level. The formation of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 marked the formation of a national civil rights movement for Black women (Lerner, 1974).
The purposes of the association were philanthropy, welfare as well as addressing the educational needs of the less fortunate in the black communities (Ibid, 1974). However, despite these early efforts, there was no recognition of the women’s contribution in the society and many early historians neglected mentioning their endeavors. Consequently, there is neither notice among historians of these noble efforts and struggles by the black women club movements, nor is there appreciation of the significant contributions they collectively made. In this regard, Lerner concurs with other writers in observing the unfair and unjust historical treatment of these black women club movements as well as their efforts and contributions to …show more content…
society. Video Ida B. Wells was as influential as any of the men in her time, because she was fighting for the rights of Black people. Her struggles epitomize the civil rights movement among black women, and the lack of acknowledgement of their zeal and efforts for justice and equality. Wells contribution to civil rights as documented in the video had three significant events. First, when slavery was abolished in 1865, following the end of the civil war, freed Blacks’ got many rights including that of marriage and owning property. It was now that Ida’s parents having been separated and sold to different owners, found the opportunity to remarry and thus reform the Wells family (Wells, 2014). This shows that Black families were committed to having strong family structures. After the war ended and civil rights were restored to the black community.
The Reconstruction period was a prosperous time for Black people, who took advantage of education. Black people became Shopkeepers, doctors, lawyers and statesmen, and some blacks emerged to middle-class society. But it took only a few years for the gains to be reversed in the South. Following the withdrawal of the federal army from the region in 1877, followed by a series of legislations that essentially took the black community back to slavery in the South. As Black people flourished, the white people revolt against them to keep them under control. Notable occurrences from the video which showed while black men seeking employment they were rounded up by the KKK and send off to pick cotton against their will. White men used lynching as a way to get rid of prominent black men and
women. Segregation became the norm and it was then that Ida demonstrated her will and resolve. When Ms. Wells was forcefully evicted from a train coach due to segregation. Wells went to court and sued the railroad company and as awarded the historical $500 for her troubles which was short lived. In Memphis, Ida Wells through her pen, took to fight injustice again when a black man (Thomas Moss) and his wife carrying an unborn child, were horrifically lynched by white supremacists (Wells, 2015). She voiced the horror through an article in a popular daily, where she spared no details in describing the terror that the young black family had been subjected to by the inhuman perpetrators who also escaped justice. She was dismayed when the court of “justice” found no one guilty of what had been openly orchestrated and witnessed by many. In her own words, the judge of the court was as guilty of the lynching as the original perpetrators themselves (Ibid, 2015). Women such as Ida wells and Gerda Lerner had many struggles and wins fighting against racial injustice, their contributions and that of many other black club women went unnoticed by historians and chroniclers. This is because there was systemic injustice and the white supremacy with accompanying segregation, discrimination, inequality and even public lynching to fight these black women civil liberators.
The history of The Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States is a fascinating account of a group of human beings, forcibly taken from their homeland, brought to a strange new continent, and forced to endure countless inhuman atrocities. Forced into a life of involuntary servitude to white slave owners, African Americans were to face an uphill battle for many years to come. Who would face that battle? To say the fight for black civil rights "was a grassroots movement of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things" would be an understatement. Countless people made it their life's work to see the progression of civil rights in America. People like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others contributed to the fight although it would take ordinary people as well to lead the way in the fight for civil rights. This paper will focus on two people whose intelligence and bravery influenced future generations of civil rights organizers and crusaders. Ida B.Wells and Mary Mcleod Bethune were two African American women whose tenacity and influence would define the term "ordinary to extraordinary".
Ida B. Wells-Barnett dedicated her life to social justice and equality. She devoted her tremendous energies to building the foundations of African-American progress in business, politics, and law. Wells-Barnett was a key participant in the formation of the National Association of Colored Women as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She spoke eloquently in support of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The legacies of these organizations have been tremendous and her contribution to each was timely and indespensible. But no cause challenged the courage and integrity of Ida B. Wells-Barnett as much as her battle against mob violence and the terror of lynching at the end of the 19th century.
Glenda Gilmore’s book Gender & Jim Crow shows a different point of view from a majority of history of the south and proves many convictions that are not often stated. Her stance from the African American point of view shows how harsh relations were at this time, as well as how hard they tried for equity in society. Gilmore’s portrayal of the Progressive Era is very straightforward and precise, by placing educated African American women at the center of Southern political history, instead of merely in the background.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett is an investigative journalist who wrote in honesty and bluntness about the tragedies and continued struggles of the Negro man. She was still very much involved with the issue even after being granted freedom and the right to vote. Statistics have shown that death and disparity continued to befall the Negro people in the South where the white man was “educated so long in that school of practice” (Pg. 677 Par. 2). Yet in all the countless murders of Negroes by the white man only three had been convicted. The white man of the South, although opposed to the freedom of Negroes would eventually have to face the fact of the changing times. However, they took every opportunity and excuse to justify their continued horrors. There were three main excuses that the white man of the South came up w...
and the academic endeavour, to illuminate the experiences of African American women and to theorize from the materiality of their lives to broader issues of political economy, family, representation and transformation” (Mullings, page xi)
In the weekly readings for week five we see two readings that talk about the connections between women’s suffrage and black women’s identities. In Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, we see the ways that black women’s identities were marginalized either through their sex or by their race. These identities were oppressed through social groups, laws, and voting rights. Discontented Black Feminists talks about the journey black feminists took to combat the sexism as well as the racism such as forming independent social clubs, sororities, in addition to appealing to the government through courts and petitions. These women formed an independent branch of feminism in which began to prioritize not one identity over another, but to look at each identity as a whole. This paved the way for future feminists to introduce the concept of intersectionality.
In the beginning of the book Hunter proceeded to tell us about the history of African-American women in a broader narrative of political and economic life in Atlanta. Her first chapter highlights the agency of Civil War era urban slaves who actively resisted the terms of their labor and thus hastened
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
... and slavery left millions of newly freed African Americans in the South without an education, a home, or a job. Before reconstruction was put in place, African Americans in the South were left roaming helplessly and hopelessly. During the reconstruction period, the African Americans’ situation did not get much better. Although helped by the government, African Americans were faced with a new problem. African Americans in the South were now being terrorized and violently discriminated by nativist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Such groups formed in backlash to Reconstruction and canceled out all the positive factors of Reconstruction. At last, after the Compromise of 1877, the military was taken out of the South and all of the Reconstruction’s efforts were basically for nothing. African Americans in the South were back to the conditions they started with.
According to Jacqueline Jones’ perspective of the treatment of African American women during the American Revolution in “The Mixed Legacy of the American Revolution for Black Women” in our early history there was an obvious status differentiation in black women’s
Baker, Ella. A. Developing Leadership among Other People in Civil Rights. The American Women's Movement, 1945-2000. A Brief History with Documents. Comp.
The end of the Civil War did not bring peace to America. There were continuous outbursts
The post Civil War era, commonly referred to as Reconstruction was the Unions attempts at rebuilding The South after approximately 4 million slaves were freed. This era was intended to be a growth period of social advancements but after the assassination of President Lincoln, things took a turn for the worst. Former Vice President Andrew Johnson rose to power and took the reigns for the reconstruction movement. Reconstruction began to not only produce inequality once again, but also was said to establish a corrupt Southern government. In turn post civil war Reconstruction derived many social, economical, and even political developments. Some of theses destructive changes included the freeing of slaves
Standley, Anne. "The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement." Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965. By Vicki L. Crawford, Jacqueline Anne. Rouse, and Barbara Woods. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Pub., 1990. 183-202. Print.
The beginning of the civil rights movement for African Americans was originally geared towards desegregation, voting rights, and equal opportunities. But, many African Americans began to realize the problem was much deeper than that. African Americans were inferior in the eyes of a white man, and no laws were going to change their views. This is where the black power movement comes into place. With violence, African Americans believed they could start a revolution. The black power movement was not only about fighting back with violence to achieve their goals, but about racial pride, self-identity, and independent political and economic power. The black power movement would soon gain the logo of the black panther, which Ruth Howard, a SNCC field director