The Butler is a 2013 American historical drama film directed and produced by Lee Daniels and written by Danny Strong. Loosely based on the real life of Eugene Allen, the film stars Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, an African-American who eyewitnesses notable political and social events of the 20th century during his 34-year tenure serving as a White House butler. In 1926, at the age of seven, Gaines is raised on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia, by his sharecropping parents. One day, the farm's owner, Thomas Westfall, rapes Cecil's mother, Hattie Pearl. Cecil's father confronts Westfall, and is shot dead. Cecil is taken in by Annabeth Westfall, the estate's caretaker and owner's grandmother, who trains Cecil as a house servant. Plot[edit] …show more content…
In 1961, after John F. Kennedy's inauguration, Louis and a dozen others are attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan as well as people wearing Nazi uniforms. Louis is shown participating in the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, where dogs and water cannons were used to stop the marchers, one of the movement's actions which inspired Kennedy to deliver a national address proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Several months after the speech, Kennedy is assassinated. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, enacts the transformative legislation into law. As a goodwill gesture, Jackie Kennedy gives Cecil one of the former president's neckties before she leaves the White House. Louis is later shown participating in the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement, which inspired Johnson to demand that Congress enact the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the late 1960s, after civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, Louis visits and tells his family that he has joined the Black Panthers. Outraged, Cecil orders Louis and his girlfriend, Carol, to leave his house. Cecil becomes aware of President Richard Nixon's plans to suppress the …show more content…
When the Black Panthers resort to violence in response to racial confrontations, Louis leaves the organization and returns to college, earning his master's degree in political science and eventually running for a seat in Congress. Cecil confronts his supervisor at the White House over the unequal pay and career advancement provided to the black White House staff. With President Ronald Reagan's support, he prevails, and his professional reputation grows to the point that he and his wife are invited by President and Nancy Reagan to be guests at a state dinner. At the dinner and afterwards, Cecil becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the class divisions in the White House. Finally, after witnessing Reagan's refusal to support economic sanctions against South Africa, he resigns. Cecil and Gloria visit the Georgia plantation where he was raised, which by then had long been abandoned. Gloria, wanting Cecil to mend his relationship with Louis, reveals to him that Louis has told her that he loves and respects them both. Realizing his son's actions are heroic, Cecil joins Louis at a Free South Africa Movement protest against South African apartheid, and they are arrested and jailed
Martin Luther King Jr. played a huge role for the black power movement, and many other younger black activists’ leader such as handsome Stokely Carmichael, Malcom X, and Rosa Park. Martin and Rosa and many others being a symbol of the non-violent struggle against segregation were he launched voting rights campaign and peaceful protesting. Rosa Park is one of the most important female that contribute a little but a huge factor of the Black Power Movement. One day riding the bus coming from work, a white bus driver told her and other African American to move to the back to give up their seats. Rosa being fed up with it she refuse, causing here to be put in jail, causing a huge movement for a bus boycott and Freedom Riders. Unlike Malcolm X and who epitomized the “Black Power” philosophy and had grown frustrated with the non-violent, integrated struggle for civil rights and worried that blacks would lose control of their own movement. Malcom X joined the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther. Black Panther played a short but important part in the civil rights movement. Being from California, the Black Panther party had four desires: equality in education, housing, employment and civil rights. In other words they were willing to use violence to get what they wanted. Bobby Seale, one of the leader had vision Black Panther party. Seale
and Robert Kennedy—both of whom fought for the rights of black people. The filmmakers could not get much of the riots after King’s death, so the chapter of 1968 was fairly thin, but this shifts into the Black Panther arc. Thankfully, the filmmakers were close with the party, so there is plenty of material here. The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary, pro-black movement started in Oakland, California and was co-founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. They focused on educating black people while informing them of their rights and arming them in order to protect themselves.
Minstrel shows were developed in the 1840's and reached its peak after the Civil War. They managed to remain popular into the early 1900s. The Minstrel shows were shows in which white performers would paint their faces black and act the role of an African American. This was called black facing. The minstrel show evolved from two types of entertainment popular in America before 1830: the impersonation of blacks given by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses, and the performances of black musicians who sang, with banjo accompaniment, in city streets. The 'father of American minstrelsy' was Thomas Dartmouth 'Daddy' Rice, who between 1828 and 1831 developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a fool who just spent his whole day slacking off, dancing the day away with an occasional mischievous prank such as stealing a watermelon from a farm. Most of the skits performed on the Minstrel shows symbolized the life of the African American plantations slaves. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and Rice performed it with great success in the United States and Britain, where he introduced it in 1836. Throughout the 1830s, up to the founding of the minstrel show proper, Rice had many imitators.
This political shift materialized with the advent of the Southern Strategy, in which Democratic president Lyndon Johnson’s support of Civil Rights harmed his political power in the South, Nixon and the Republican Party picked up on these formerly blue states and promoted conservative politics in order to gain a larger voter representation. Nixon was elected in a year drenched in social and political unrest as race riots occurred in 118 U.S. cities in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, as well as overall American bitterness due to the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the extensive student-led activist opposition to the Vietnam War. The late 1960’s also saw the advent of several movements promoting Black Nationalism to unify the African-American community through the efforts of Black Power, most notably the formation of the Black Panthers in 1967 who were dedicated to overseeing the protection of African-Americans against police brutality and the support of disadvantaged street children through their Free Breakfast for Children program. During this time, black power was politically reflected through the electorate as the 1960-70’s saw a rise in Black elected officials. In 1969 there were a total of 994 black men and 131 black women in office in the country, this figure more than tripled by 1975 when there were 2969 black men and 530 black women acting in office; more than half of these elected officials were acting in Southern States....
The Black Panther Party, which was co-founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966, was a political party that pushed to overcome social oppression. After the assassination of Black activist Malcom X, the Panthers decided they had enough of seeing their race be denied the freedom they deserved. Members of the Black Panthers were tired of a society that continued to consider them “niggers.” They were tired of not having the chance to get out of poverty and live comfortably. They were tired of not getting a quality education that public schools in America should’ve been providing them. They were tired of being beaten, harassed, and unruly discriminated against by police solely because of the color of their skin. They wanted to live in the beautiful nation that America appeared to be for Whites. They wanted freedom and equality for African-Americans.
In Living for the City, Donna Murch details the origins and the rise to prominence the Black Panther Party experienced during the 1960s and into the 1970s. The Civil Rights Movement and eventually the Black Panther Movement of Oakland, California emerged from the growing population of migrating Southern African Americans who carried with them the traditional strength and resolve of the church community and family values. Though the area was driven heavily by the massive movement of industrialization during World War II, the end of the war left a period of economic collapse and social chaos in its wake. The Black Panther Party was formed in this wake; driven by continuing violence against the African American youth by the local police forces,
The Black Panther Movement made a progressive contribution to the US and civil rights. In order for a person to understand what the Civil Rights movement was, they would need to understand what political movements were involved, that made a big impact on the Black Community. What was the Civil Rights movement? The Civil Rights movement lasted from the late 1960s and early 1970s. But, the Civil Rights was not born during that time. When Abraham Lincoln was President, he had signed an agreement named the Emancipation Proclamation. This Proclamation was addressed to emancipate all of the slaves that were written on paper. If they were to leave their job as a slave they would have had no where to go and no money, so they still worked for their previous slave owners to get paid and have a life of their own. Other than Abraham Lincoln, who practically saved the black race, there were many others who were involved in the civil rights. They themselves created their own movement inside the civil rights to help give the black community freedom of speech and to stop the government from what the black community thought was racist.
George Washington Carver was born near Diamond Grove, Missouri in 1864 on a plantation owned by a slave owner. His father, Moses Carver, and his mother, Susan Carver, were slaves on that plantation. As a young infant, George along with his mother was kidnapped by Confederate night raiders and was taken to Arkansas to be sold into slavery. Moses Carver‘s owner searched for George and finally found him and reclaimed him, but his mother was already sold. The man who owned George at the time didn’t want to give George back, so Moses’ owner traded a horse for the boy. George was given back to his father suffering from a terrible case of whooping cough, and ended up with a noticeable stutter.
Kennedy’s crusade began slowly to the dismay of many civil rights leaders in February of 1963. He began by sending the United States Congress a “Special Message on Civil Rights,” stating,
The dominant culture perceived the Black Panther Party to be a threat, prevented their success whenever possible, and greatly contributed to their ultimate demise. In 1968 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover proclaimed: “The Black Panther Party is the single greatest threat to the internal security of the United States” (156). The Party’s founder, Huey Newton, came to represent “the symbol of change for Americans, (by) questioning everything scared to the American way of life” (237).
Nothing translates the modern depiction of southern literature quite like the novel, Forrest Gump. Set in the deep south of the fictional town of Greenbow, Alabama, Winston Groom’s Forrest Gump gives the audience an adequate insight into how the southern way of life was in the late fifties through the seventies. The majority of the movie shows important events during American history at the time. Although this is an essential part of the storyline, the novel itself gives readers a much more in-depth look into southern life. Forrest Gump notes the racial references related to that time period, the portrayal of classic southern culture, and allows southern stereotypes to be apparent throughout.
The Black Panther Party was started in Oakland, California in 1966, when “Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton took up arms and declared themselves apart of a global revolution against American imperialism” (Bloom). They wanted to empower the black people to stand up for themselves and defend themselves against the police and their unjust ways. The police were the oppressor’s that kept blacks down and kept blacks from gaining any self-rights. In the book “The Forbidden History of the Black Panther Party”, Bloom quoted from Huey P. Newton stating that “Because Black people desire their own destiny; they are constantly inflicted with brutality from the occupying army, em...
The Black Panther Party was founded on October, 15, 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California. This organization was a black revolutionary socialist party that was created to primarily protect African American neighborhoods from violent police brutality. In 1967, the party released and circulated its first newspaper, The Black Panther. Within the same year the organization also protested a ban on weapons in Sacramento on the California State Capitol. After becoming an icon of the 1960's counterculture, the Party was see in numerous cities throughout the nation, with record membership at 10,000 in 1969. Editor of The Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver and his editorial committee created a document called the Ten-Point Program. This document was comprised of desired wants and needs for the black community, such as; freedom, employment, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. The Black Panthers expressed their injustices with their saying of, "What we Want, What we Believe". Not only did this document demand specific wants for the panthers, it was also a sign of hope and inspiration for the underprivileged blacks that lived in ghettos across the nation. With a strong passion to turn around the poor black communities, the Panthers installed a variety of community social programs that were made to improve several aspects of the inner city ghettos. Two of their most commonly known programs were its Free Breakfast for children program and its armed citizens patrol that made sure police officers behaved within their limit of power and to protect blacks who became victims of racist police brutality abuse. They also instituted a free medical care program and fought the common problem of young blacks using narco...
The Black Panther had a huge background of history, goals, and beliefs. Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, Ca 1966, founded the Panthers. They were originally as an African American self defense force and were highly influenced by Malcolm X’s ideas. They were named after Lowndes County Freedom Organization or LCFO. The Panthers had many goals like; giving back to the ghetto, protecting blacks from police brutality, and to help blacks get freedom and jobs. They also had many beliefs like; Malcolm X was a great person, and they believed that gun use was ok if necessary, or if people were oppressing the poor.
Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness by Jane M. Ussher was the book I chose to study. The book was published in 1991 by Harvester Wheatsheaf. I chose Women’s Madness because I feel that women’s mental health is overlooked and mistreated. Ussher does a great job of acknowledging men’s madness, but also researching how a woman's health is affected by living in a misogynistic world.