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Emma goldman essays
Emma Goldman: American Individualist
Emma goldman essays
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Upon reflecting on today's quarter projects an image came into my mind. It was a circle with a bunch of different arrows moving out from a common center trying to push out of the circle that contained them (see below). I found this to be an apt description of the individuals we discussed in class today. All of them worked to apply pressure to society in different ways. One common link I saw between Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs and Ida B. Wells was applying political pressure. Although they worked towards different goals I could see a common thread between the methods they used to apply pressure which often involved writing and trying to communicate their ideas to the masses. I found these ideas to be a rather efficient way to spread these beliefs
with both supporters and adversaries. In the case of Emma Goldman and Eugene V. Debs I did not necessarily agree with these ideas; however, I found that they were very effective in persuading people. A common idea that I was able to see in presentations on Theodore Dreiser and Charles Demuth, was the idea of focusing on things others did not. Dreiser’s idea focused on the way people in this society were internally corrupt, and Demuth focused on urban life. I found these ideas to be an interesting perspective on issues of the day. Although they pushed out against society in different ways, they all featured a common focus on trying to push out against what they wanted to change.
During the late 1800's and early 1900's, change in American society was very evident in the economy. An extraordinary expansion of the industrial economy was taking place, presenting new forms of business organization and bringing trusts and holding companies into the national picture. The turn of the century is known as the "Great Merger Movement:" over two thousand corporations were "swallowed up" by one hundred and fifty giant holding companies.1 This powerful change in industry brought about controversy and was a source of social anxiety. How were people to deal with this great movement and understand the reasons behind the new advancements? Through the use of propaganda, the public was enlightened and the trusts were attacked. Muckraking, a term categorizing this type of journalism, began in 1903 and lasted until 1912. It uncovered the dirt of trusts and accurately voiced the public's alarm of this new form of industrial control. Ida Tarbell, a known muckraker, spearheaded this popular investigative movement.2 As a journalist, she produced one of the most detailed examinations of a monopolistic trust, The Standard Oil Company.3 Taking on a difficult responsibility and using her unique journalistic skills, Ida Tarbell was able to get to the bottom of a scheme that allowed the oil industry to be manipulated by a single man, John D. Rockefeller.
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 born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862 and died March
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.
As stated in the first paragraph, these politics control both the institutions and the workplaces of modern America, and therefore intersect in the development of policy and laws. For example, The Norm controls financial institutions, government, religion, schools, human services, healthcare, criminal justice, corporations, factories, and large businesses thereby creating a vicious circle of power, privilege, exploitation, and domination.
Zora Neale Hurston and Maya Angelou are arguably the most influential writers of the mid 20th century . Their work has inspired young African Americans to have more confidence in their own abilities. Their work has also been studied and taught countless times in many schools across the U.S. But the main reason why their work is considered classics in American literature; is because their work stands as testament to the treatment, and struggles of African Americans in the mid 20th century America.
Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a newspaper editor and journalist who went on to lead the American anti-lynching crusade. Working closely with both African-American community leaders and American suffragists, Wells worked to raise gender issues within the "Race Question" and race issues within the "Woman Question." Wells was born the daughter of slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. During Reconstruction, she was educated at a Missouri Freedman's School, Rust University, and began teaching school at the age of fourteen. In 1884, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she continued to teach while attending Fisk University during summer sessions. In Tennessee, especially, she was appalled at the poor treatment she and other African-Americans received. After she was forcibly removed from her seat for refusing to move to a "colored car" on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected her suit against the railroad for violating her civil rights in 1877. This event and the legal struggle that followed it, however, encouraged Wells to continue to oppose racial injustice toward African-Americans. She took up journalism in addition to school teaching, and in 1891, after she had written several newspaper articles critical of the educational opportunities afforded African-American students, her teaching contract was not renewed. Effectively barred from teaching, she invested her savings in a part-inte...
Ida B. Wells was a woman who devoted her life to social justice and equality for both African Americans and women. She was a woman of unique character. Her courage was what caused her to stand out amongst the majority of black women during her time who were subject to both racial and gender oppression. Wells was amongst the first of many to dedicate her life to the fight against injustice and the push for African American progression.
Ida B. Wells was a woman dedicated to a cause, a cause to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from being murdered by lynching. Lynching is defined as to take the law into its own hands and kill someone in punishment for a crime or a presumed crime. Ida B. Wells’ back round made her a logical spokesperson against lynching. She drew on many experiences throughout her life to aid in her crusade. Her position as a black woman, however, affected her credibility both in and out of America in a few different ways.
Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells was dedicated to journalism and letting people know what is going on. With her journalism investigation instincts, she uses to identify what excuses the whites use to identify lynch campaign against blacks. In the following essay, I will explain what reasons for this vicious and sustained campaign of violence against African-Americans. Ida B. Wells felt that the white should be considered as rapist more than blacks.
Ida Bell Wells, more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was born in Holly Springs Mississippi on the 16th of July in 1862. Ida was raised by her mother Lizzie Wells and her father James Wells. She was born into slavery as the oldest of eight children in the family. Both Ida’s parents were enslaved during the Civil War but after the war they became active in the Republican Party during the Reconstruction era. Ida’s father, James, was also involved in the Freedman’s Aid Society (www.biography.com). He also helped to start Shaw University. Shaw University was a university for the newly freed slaves to attend, it was also where Ida received the majority of her schooling. However, Ida received little schooling because she was forced to take care of her other siblings after her parents and one of her siblings passed away due to Yellow Fever. Ida became a teacher at the age of 16 as a way to make money for her and her siblings. Eventually Ida and all her sisters moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with their aunt, leaving all their brothers behind to continue working. In Memphis Ida began to stand up for the rights of African Americans and women.
Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist. Zora plays an important role for the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston is considered one of the titans of twentieth-century African American literature. Despite that she would later fall into disgrace because of her firm views of civil rights, her lyrical writing which praise southern black culture has influenced generations of black American literary figures. Hurston’s work also had an impact on later black American authors such as Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.
During the building-trade unions’ strike Ellsworth Toohey declares in his address to the strikers, “We shall unite or we shall be defeated. Our will-the will of the disinherited, the forgotten, the oppressed-shall weld us into a solid bulwark” (103). Toohey’s declaration sets the stage for the prodigious irony that is his character. The self proclaimed humanitarian defines the strikers, and by extension the working class, as weak and helpless, in need of their mass numbers to rise against their powerful oppressors, the privileged contractors and architects in need of their labor and skill, but unwilling to share in the wealth generated by the collective creation. The irony of Toohey’s words is that by liberating man of his oppressors, Toohey becomes his beloved controller. Toohey’s success as a columnist and speaker lay in his perceived virtue and wisdom, through which followers can absolve themselves of selfish sin an ego, instead uniting for the collective “good” and advancement of all men into a kinder, more loving and more inclusive tomorrow. Religions and socio-political movements for thousands of years have used the same tactics in order to gain momentum. From the Crusades, to Mao, to Ryan Murphy’s Glee there have been those like Toohey who gained power by offering mankind redemption in exchange for their service or support. Toohey, as he asked of the Bible-teacher at fifteen, achieves his wealth through the collection of souls (306). In The Fountainhead Toohey collects souls by using his influence to support the unexceptional, Toohey, a genius in his own right, gains power over the larger mechanism that is New York City; Toohey also hinders and destroys the careers of geniuses like himself: Roark, Mallory, and Dominique Fra...
Although it is accepted that pressure groups indeed pressure politics in certain directions, it is quite a different task to describe how pressure groups link public opinion to government action. Apparently the driving force behind action is not as cut and dry as the image of “the lobbyist who speaks for a united following, determined in its aims and prepared to reward its friends and punish its enemies at the polls.” In reality, it may appear that spokesmen of mass-membership pressure groups are “unrepresentative of the opinions of their members.” This perception, however, does not take into account the wide potential for variability in policy opinion that can occur within large groups. On the contrary, it is not a “wicked betrayal” or a “deliberate departure from the mass mandate;” it is more likely that there are other theorems with which to explain this phenomenon. Alike to all other human groups, “opinions…do not fall into blacks and whites.” In Keys’ essay, he attempts to hypothesize that there are naturally stratified layers of activism and pacifism within group membership. “It may be nature of mass groups that attachment to the positions voiced by the peak spokesmen varies with the attachment to and involvement in the group.” When the functioning of these groups are looked upon in this manner, it is logical to assume that special interest groups “invar...
WATTS, Duncan. (2007). Pressure Groups. [online]. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press. Book from MyiLibrary last accessed 16 March 2011 at: http://myilibrary.com/