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Women and african american struggle for equality
African american history and struggles
Women and african american struggle for equality
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African-American women lived very hard lives during the era of Malcolm X compared to white women, specifically from the 1930s to the 1960s. Women were already classified below men during this time. However, when race became a factor, this ultimately led to black women being subjugated into the lowest social group. In The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the struggles of living an African-American life as a women are very accurately depicted through the female characters of Louise, Laura, and Ella. Due to mainstream racial stereotypes and segregation during this era, women of color compared to white women were viewed as; being less capable at overall performing and lower class humans undeserving of rights. Malcolm’s respect and appreciation for …show more content…
This made acquiring stable jobs for African-Americans extremely difficult, unless they were given a proper education; which was hardly attainable for black families. The harsh reality of people of color only working menial careers is seen in The Autobiography of Malcolm X when the ‘top class’ Lansing blacks were employed in low-status labor. “I’d guess that eight out of ten of the Hill Negroes of Roxbury, despite the impressive-sounding job titles they affected, actually worked as menials and servants” (Haley 43). This is because African-Americans were viewed as less capable by white society, so only the entry level jobs were left for them. According to the 1930s census, African-American women would often find only low-level jobs working in domestic and personal services. As reflected upon in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, women of color would occasionally resort to prostitution when unable to support themselves financially; a prime example would be Laura’s indulgence into adultery. Nonetheless, during World War II, a severe labor shortage of male factory workers who left to serve allowed for more women to fill the …show more content…
These women were so determined to initiate receiving racial equality due to the amount they suffered and the cruel oppression exerted upon them. African-American women participated in every aspect towards the black freedom movement: as leaders, followers, strategists, and theorists. In fact, women of color made up the majority of protestors in both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Black Panther Party (BPP). According to Vivan Malone Jones, the first black female director of the nonpartisan Voter Education Project, “These women had played vital roles in the struggle for human rights and justice in the South and the nation”. Women were invaluable in the Civil Rights Movement. As one of the scholarly civil rights activists states, “Women took civil rights workers into their homes of course … but women also canvassed more than men, showed up more frequently at mass meetings and demonstrations and more frequently attempted to vote.” African women put an end to hundreds of years of segregation, discrimination, and lack of rights after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of
In “ ‘It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped’: Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle” by Danielle L. McGuire, McGuire begins her piece with a haunting tale of the rape of Betty Jean Owens, that really illustrates the severity of racial brutality in the 1950s. She depicts a long history of african-american women who refuse to remain silent, even in the face of adversity, and even death, and who've left behind a testimony of the many wrong-doings that have been done to them. Their will to fight against the psychological and physical intimidation that expresses male domination and white supremacy is extremely admirable. The mobilization of the community, and the rightful conviction of the 4 white men most definitely challenged ideologies of racial inequality and sexual domination, and inspired a revolution in societal
...African-American women domestic workers in Atlanta during the periods between Reconstruction and World War 1 demonstrate they were active participates in the economic, social and political life of the New South. In addition, the private and public spheres accorded to white woman was non-existent for African-American women. Hunter concludes that the strategies employed by the washerwoman’s strike are inconclusive at best and evidence is lacking whether their demands for wage increases ever materialized. She does note however, that washerwoman did maintain the appearance of independence not enjoyed by most workers.
Moody’s position as an African American woman provides a unique insight into these themes through her story. As a little girl, Moody would sit on the porch of her house watch her parents go to work. Everyday she would see them walk down the hill at the break of dawn to go to work, and walk back up when the sun was going down to come back home. At this time in her life, Moody did not understand segregation, and that her parents were slaves and working for a white man. But, as growing up poor and black in the rural south with a single mother trying to provide for her family, Moody quickly realized the importance of working. Working as a woman in the forties and fifties was completely different from males. They were still fighting for gender equality, which restricted women to working low wage jobs like maids for white families. Moody has a unique insight to the world of working because she was a young lady that was working herself to help keep herself and her bother and sister in school. Through work, Moody started to realize what segregation was and how it impacted her and her life. While working for Mrs. Johnson and spending the nights with Miss Ola, she started to realize basic di...
Fannie Lou Hamer and Malcolm X, like most civil rights activists, were exposed to the horrors of racism on a daily basis. These two leaders in particular, recognized a recurring theme of conscious oppression of Black Americans on the part of white Americans and identified the ways in which the “dominant” social group benefited from such oppression. Fannie Lou Hamer’s experience sharecropping and within the justice system helped her to develop an ideology of civil rights that centered on the empowerment of Black Americans. When Hamer was six years old the owner of the plantation on which her family lived and worked encouraged her to pick cotton. Making it seem like a game or challenge, the owner offered her a reward of food, knowing that the young girl was going hungry as a result of the limited amount of food he supplied to her family. Just like that, Hamer was tricked into picking cotton to earn minimal rewards.2 This anecdote from her life parallels the struggle of many sharecroppers at the time. Released from slavery, Black me...
The Author of this book (On our own terms: race, class, and gender in the lives of African American Women) Leith Mullings seeks to explore the modern and historical lives of African American women on the issues of race, class and gender. Mullings does this in a very analytical way using a collection of essays written and collected over a twenty five year period. The author’s systematic format best explains her point of view. The book explores issues such as family, work and health comparing and contrasting between white and black women as well as between men and women of both races.
After many years of battling for equality among the sexes, people today have no idea of the trails that women went through so that women of future generations could have the same privileges and treatment as men. Several generations have come since the women’s rights movement and the women of these generations have different opportunities in family life, religion, government, employment, and education that women fought for. The Women’s Rights Movement began with a small group of people that questioned why human lives, especially those of women, were unfairly confined. Many women, like Sojourner Truth and Fanny Fern, worked consciously to create a better world by bringing awareness to these inequalities. Sojourner Truth, prominent slave and advocate
Beale, Frances. "Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female." An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought. New York: New, 1995. 146. Print.
During Lawrence’s childhood, his family was forced to relocate many times as his parents looked for work. Steady jobs were hard to find, especially for African Americans. Racial prejudice prevented them from pursuing certain jobs or professions.
To the modern white women who grew up in comfort and did not have to work until she graduated from high school, the life of Anne Moody reads as shocking, and almost too bad to be true. Indeed, white women of the modern age have grown accustomed to a certain standard of living that lies lightyears away from the experience of growing up black in the rural south. Anne Moody mystifies the reader in her gripping and beautifully written memoir, Coming of Age in Mississippi, while paralleling her own life to the evolution of the Civil Rights movement. This is done throughout major turning points in the author’s life, and a detailed explanation of what had to be endured in the name of equality.
Without the civil rights movement, the women’s movement likely would never have taken off on its own. The civil rights movement and the activists involved gave women a model for success. The method the civil rights movement used demonstrated the power of solving social problems through collective action. By using lunch counter sit-ins, organizing into national networks like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and reaching into college campuses through the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the civil rights movement was able to bring together northerners and southerners, older and younger citizens and men and women to work for a single cause. Women took inspiration from this in the creation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and other feminist groups – NOW even states in its Statement of Purpose that “there is no civil rights movement to speak for women, as there has been for Negroes and other victims of discrimination” and that NOW must take on that responsibility.
The autobiography of Malcolm X is a book that will enlighten the reader into some of the hardships and discrimination the Afro-American has had to endure in America. Many people consider Malcolm X to be a radical leader, encouraging violence as a tool to fight discrimination. What this book does, for me and for many others, is open the world that Malcolm was faced and clarifies many of the controversial actions of Malcolm, such as preaching hate towards whites. The autobiography of Malcolm X is a book that helps the reader to understand some of the discrimination that Afro-Americans are faced with, all-the-while, explaining and giving reasoning to the deliberations that Malcolm X dealt and the impact that he has left on millions of people
Women had been “denied basic rights, trapped in the home [their] entire life and discriminated against in the workplace”(http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/). Women wanted a political say and wanted people to look at them the way people would look at men. in 1968, many women even protested the Miss America Beauty Pageant because it made it look that women were only worth their physical beauty. A stereotyped image was not the only thing they fought, “Women also fought for the right to abortion or reproductive rights, as most people called it” (http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/). These were the reason why the Women started the Women’s Liberation. African Americans, however, had different causes. After almost a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, black men are still being treated unfairly. They were being oppresed by the so-called “Jim Crow” laws which “barred them from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, from juries and legislatures” (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/). They wanted equal rights, equal facilities and equal treatment as the whites. This unfairness sparked the African American Civil Right’s Movement. This unfairness was seen in the Women’s Liberation as well. Both were treated unfairly by the “superior”. Both wanted equal rights, from the men or whites oppressing them. They both wanted equal treatment and equal rights. During the actual movement
According to Elaine Moon, the author of the book African American life series: Untold tales, unsung heroes, “In 1916 the Detroit Urban League was founded to address the needs of the large number of blacks who were migrating to Detroit in hopes of finding a better life” (Moon, 1993, p. 13). Mr. Forrester B. Washington (IMAGE 1) was one of the founding members of the Detroit Urban League. As new job opportunities, especially in the industrial and car manufacturing fields, were being created in Detroit, African Americans applied for several of the available jobs in hopes of gaining an income to support themselves and their families. However, most of the African American job applicants were turned down by many of the white employers, even if the African Americans had the necessary education and skills to successfully perform the job tasks on a daily basis. Upon noticing this rejection of African American job applicants by white employers, the Detroit Urban League implemented informational meetings regarding employment in the daily operation of their organization. Thomas Sugrue, the author of the book The origins of the urban crisis: Race and inequ...
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way for the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women to have that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s. The focus of The Women’s Liberation Movement was idealized off The Civil Rights Movement; it was founded on the elimination of discriminatory practices and sexist attitudes (Freeman, 1995).
When discussing the American Civil Rights Movement, the names that seem to come up are those of prominent black men. While these men did enormous amounts of good during this movement, there are many women who seem to be poorly represented or credited. Black women had a huge amount of influence during the Civil Rights Movement. While many of the protests and movements were led by men, the women were behind the scenes organizing and promoting and popularizing the ideas themselves. Many women were heavily involved in political organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and many others. Even if they were not directly involved in organizations, however, many black women became informal leaders of movements and/or enthusiastic participants. A few famous example of black women’s involvement are: Citizenship Schools in South Carolina, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, And various women’s involvement in political groups and organizations.