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Discrimination in american history x
Discrimination in american history x
African American discrimination history
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Discrimination against blacks during the 1960’s was extremely prevalent in the United States and its legal system. Everyone, including blacks, had the right to legal representation and a fair trial, and was supposed to be treated “separate but equal”. The color of one’s skin actually determined the fate of the trial and the verdict of the accused; if a man’s skin was black, they were more likely to be proven guilty even if they were actually innocent. The judgement was faulty towards blacks, and it was something that no one could control. Blacks could be completely innocent but would be found guilty all because of the color of their skin. Families grew up teaching and learning that whites were superior to blacks.
In Harper Lee’s novel,
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To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson was accused of raping and beating a white woman, Mayella Ewell. He was put on trial to face the charges he was accused of. The story he presented was substantially more believable than Mayella Ewell's story. Mayella’s injuries were consistent with someone who was left handed. Tom could not use his left hand. “He got it caught in a cotton gin, caught it in Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s cotton gin when was a boy… like to bled to death… tore all the muscles loose from his bones” (Lee 249). However, despite the unwavering dedication of Atticus Finch, his white lawyer, the absence of evidence, and a moving courtroom speech, Tom Robinson was convicted of a crime that he did not commit. This jury ruling caused both those who advocated Robinson’s conviction and those who were convinced of his innocence to question their beliefs of justice and fairness. As if a false conviction was not enough, Tom was eventually shot and killed while trying to escape prison, and the sense of justice and fairness seem to be completely violated. The verdict of Tom’s trial showed that blacks were not being given a fair trial in court due to the color of their skin. The lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, represents another case in which showed that blacks were not given fair trials.
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, Emmett was brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman. His attackers, the white woman’s husband and her brother, made Emmitt carry a 75-pound cotton-gin to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and made him take off his clothes. The two men then beat him to an inch of his life, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. Three days later, his body was discovered but was beaten beyond recognition that it was identified by a ring he wore from his father. Two weeks later, the men went on trial for the murder and on September 23, the all-white jury reached the verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body. Many people around the country were outraged by the decision and also by the state’s decision not to indict the two men on the separate charge of kidnapping. Several weeks later, the men sold the real story to the newspapers, confessing that they really did murder Emmett Till and went into vast detail of how they carried out the crime (The Death of Emmett Till). Emmett Till did not get a fair trial and justice because of the color of his skin. The men accused got off on the charges because of the “all-white” jury and the discrimination
towards blacks. Mrs. Till then held an open casket at Emmett’s funeral to show the world how blacks were being treated. Emmett Till’s murder trial brought attention to the physical violence of the Jim Crow segregation laws in the South and an early motivation of the African American Civil Rights Movement. The Scottsboro Boys and the trial that took place was another case in which showed that blacks were not given fair trials due to the color of their skin. Nine young black men, illegally riding the rails looking for work, were taken off a freight train at Scottsboro, Alabama and held on a minor charge. The Scottsboro deputies found two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, and pressured them into accusing the nine youths of raping them on board the train. The charge of raping white women was an explosive accusation, and within two weeks the Scottsboro Boys were convicted and eight sentenced to death, the youngest, Leroy Wright at age 13, to life imprisonment. The case went to the United States Supreme Court in 1937, and the boys were eventually found not guilty. I t took almost 20 years before the only remaining boy left, Leroy Wright, was released from prison. The Scottsboro Boys trial is one of the most successful cases to beat the Jim Crow legal system.
Months before Emmett's death in 1955, two African American activists in Mississippi had been murdered. An NAACP field worker, the Reverend George Lee, was shot and killed at point blank range while driving in his car after trying to vote in Belzoni. A few weeks later in Brookhaven, Lamar Smith was shot and killed in front of the county courthouse -- in broad daylight and before witnesses -- after casting his ballot. Both were active in black voter registration drives. No one was arrested in connection with either murder
On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.
In contrast to blacks living in the South, Emmett Till was raised in a “thriving, middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side” (Biography.com Editors). The neighborhood comprised of several black-owned businesses and companies. Unfortunately, he was unaware of the racial discrimination and segregation transpiring in the South when he visited his family in the state of Mississippi. Emmett had attended a segregated school previously, but he was unprepared for “the level of segregation he encountered in Mississippi” (History.com Staff). Chicago and Mississippi are
An African American women name Mamie till had her only child murder for just whistling at a white woman. Her only child name Emmett Louis till was born in 1941 in July twenty five in Chicago cook county hospital. Mamie till was married to a men name Louis till. They were only eighteen years old when they got marry. When Emmett till was about one year old when his parents separated. Emmett till never knew his father. His father was a private soldier in the United States army during World War two. Three days later Mamie received a letter saying that Louis till had been executed for “willful misconduct”. Mamie till was given Louis ring with his initial L.T. As a single mother Mamie work for hours for the air force as a clerk. Since Mamie worked more than twelve hours Emmett till will have done the cooking, cleaning, and even the laundry. Emmett till was a funny, responsible, and a high spirited child. Emmett till attend at an all-black school called McCosh. His mother will always tell Emmett till to take care of himself because of his race. One day Emmett till great uncle Moses Wright had come from all the way from Mississippi to visit his family from Chicago. When his great uncle had to go he was planning on taking Emmett tills cousins with him. Later on Emmett till found out that his great uncle...
Emmett Till had been visiting family in the late summer of 1955. He hadn't known the rules in Southern United States. That was his first mistake. Emmett Till, an innocent 14 year old colored boy, found at the bottom of the Tallahatchie River in 1955. 2 white men had been accused of the murder. His mother, Mamie Till, was not about to let someone get away with the murder of her 14 year old son. She wanted the people to see what had been done and Mamie Till wanted justice to be served. Mamie Till was fed up with the inequality and wanted to change it. She had her eyes on the prize.
Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy visiting Money,Mississippi from Chicago, Illinois in 1955. He whistled, flirted, and touched a white woman who was working at a store where Emmett Till was purchasing bubble gum. A day later Till was abducted at gunpoint from his great uncle’s house. 3 days after that Till’s body was found, unrecognizable other than a ring he had on. He was unprepared for the intense segregation of Mississippi.The death of this young boy then sparked a movement to end the inequality of African Americans in the United States.
In the early 1900’s racism was a force to be reckoned with, but not knowing the dangers of the south, Emmett Till was unaware of his actions and the consequences. While visiting his uncle in Mississippi Emmett Till was murdered for whistling at a white woman. Not knowing the dangers of the south Emmett acted like his casual, cocky self. Emmett Till’s death is thought to be the spark of the Civil Rights Movement (Crowe). Even though everyone knew who had murdered Emmitt, the men were never put to justice or charged.
The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.
Despite the 14th and 15th constitutional amendments that guarantee citizenship and voting right regardless of race and religion, southern states, in practice, denied African Americans the right to vote by setting up literacy tests and charging a poll tax that was designed only to disqualify them as voters. In 1955, African Americans still had significantly less political power than their white counterparts. As a result, they were powerless to prevent the white from segregating all aspects of their lives and could not stop racial discrimination in public accommodations, education, and economic opportunities. Following the 1954 Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, it remained a hot issue in 1955. That year, however, it was the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till that directed the nation’s attention to the racial discrimination in America.
The 1950s was a great success for the civil rights movement; there were a number of developments which greatly improved the lives of black people in America and really started the civil rights movement, as black people became more confident and willing to fight for their cause. The first big development of the ‘50s came almost immediately at the turn of the decade, when the Supreme Court essentially overturned the verdict reached in the Plessy vs. Ferguson trial of 1896. Thanks to the NAACP lawyers, the Supreme Court made three decisions regarding civil rights which not only showed that at times the government was on the black side, but also almost completely overturned the ‘separate but equal’ idea that had been followed for 54 years. The next big step in the civil rights movement came in 1954, with the BROWN vs. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA case, where Thurgood Marshall, representing Brown, argued that segregation was against the 4th Amendment of the American constitution.
The justice system in the 1960's was pretty harsh compared to today. The system back then was unjust and in a way, racist. Martin Luther King Jr Responds to just one act of criticism simply explaining what is right. King uses hyperbole and metaphor to convince the clergymen that segregation is wrong and that peace needs to be made between blacks and whites.
To wrap it up, African Americans lived an unfair past in the south, such as Alabama, during the 1930s because of discrimination and the misleading thoughts towards them. The Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws and the way they were generally treated in southern states all exemplify this merciless time period of the behavior towards them. They were not given the same respect, impression, and prospect as the rest of the citizens of America, and instead they were tortured. Therefore, one group should never be singled out and should be given the same first intuition as the rest of the people, and should never be judged by color, but instead by character.
In the journal article by Robert Staples, “White Power, Black Crime and Racial Politics,” it explains how until 1964 there was a blatant disregard for African American people. It was legal for African American to not even be considered people, they could be considered property as far as sales and auctions go according to the Dred Scott case. In the article, the
middle of paper ... ... During the late 1940s and early 1950s, many African Americans were subjected to racism in America. Blacks during this time had few opportunities and were constantly ridiculed by whites based on the color of their skin. Numerous blacks ridiculed themselves and their own race based on the color of their skin.
It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s. During the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place, it was the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools....