Terrorism on African Americans in America

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The terrorization of African Americans in America did not began when the FBI created the counterintelligence program Cointel Pro, people of African descent have been terrorized in the United States since their unwilling arrival to the country in the 17th century. Slavery in America directly depended on the agricultural work of African slaves. Africans were dehumanized and treated no better than cattle in the fields. They were unable to learn how to read and write and had no legal rights whatsoever. The 1857 Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship and basic rights to all blacks- free or enslaved. White Americans robbed Africans of their cultures, religions, customs, and humanity in order to keep the Africans under total control. By the late 1700s, the agricultural labor demanded by slavery had been transformed into a racial caste system. The modern day socially constructed concept of race was created to make African Americans believe that they were inferior to the white race. This sense of white inferiority rationalized the enslavement of Africans. African women, men, and children were often raped, beaten, lynched, and even at times put to death to show the power and dominance the white master had over the slave. These violent acts were meant to frighten the African slave to often teach the other slaves a lesson of power and control and to let them know that if you disobey the master, this can happen to you also. Slavery eventually ended in 1963 with the Emancipation Proclamation, but it wasn’t fully abolished until 1965 with the 13th Amendment being passed in the US Constitution. The freeing of the slaves constituted freedom de jure, but de facto slavery came into full effect in 1865-1866, when white sout... ... middle of paper ... ...as the actions of the United States government goes unnoticed, they will continue to infiltrate, disrupt, and terrorize any organization, or person that pose a threat to them. Works Cited "terrorism." Merriam-Webster.com. 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com (8 May 2014). Barnett, Ida B., and Ida B. Barnett. Southern horrors and other writings: the anti-lynching campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. Boston, MA: Bedford Books, 1997. Bloom, Joshua, and Waldo E. Martin. Black against empire: the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Newton, Huey P.. Revolutionary suicide. [1st ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose. M. Wesley Swearingen. Boston. South End Press. 1995 http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm http://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists

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