Black Lives Matter Summary

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The main idea of this article is the unattractive contrast shown between the civil rights movement and black lives matter. The audience is those just like me wanting to understand how violence was ever a key principal in Dr. King’s movements and how it ties in with black lives matter. My Post colleague Simone Sebastian wrote a provocative column on the Black Lives Matter movement that matched its headline. The thesis of “Don’t criticize Black Lives Matter for provoking violence. The civil rights movement did, too” can be found in the third paragraph. Quoting from Martin Luther King’s 1963 “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” in which he called for “direct action” to “dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored,“ Sebastian writes, “In other …show more content…

King NEVER ‘invited’ violence,” Jones told me via e-mail. “It is turning history on its head to say ‘Violence was critical to the success of the 1960s civil rights movement, as it has been to every step of racial progress in U.S. history.’ ” “What was critical to the success of the 1960’s civil right movement was the ability of Dr. King to awaken and raise the conscience of white America to the immorality of racial segregation,” Jones continued, “and its contravention to the precept and principles enshrined in or Declaration of Independence and the provisions of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to our Constitution.” He added, “To say violence ‘has been critical to every step of racial progress’ is an interpretation of the Civil Rights Movement and earlier 19th and Century struggles of Negroes to be free is at worst cynical and at best simply an immoral interpretation of our Freedom Struggle.” “The Black Lives Matter movement at this time and place is not intended to say that white lives don’t matter. It’s intended to say that in the recent period of time, we have looked at the application of law enforcement and it appears that there’s been unnecessary, repetitive use of lethal force against young African-American men and, in some cases, African-American women,” he …show more content…

The Black Lives Matter movement, like its civil rights antecedent, is perceived by its detractors to incite violence. But to feed into the perception that Black Lives Matter actively incites violence to achieve its goals robs it of the moral suasion needed to ensure that black lives matter in America the way all lives

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