American Civil Liberties Union: Study Notes

ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Unit. This group, started from a small group of visionaries into the nation’s original supporter of the rights preserved in the U.S. Constitution. The American Civil Liberties Unit to this present day still progresses to battle the corruption of the government and to forcefully support every individual's freedoms including citizens’ rights to privacy, religion, a woman’s right to choose, speech, and so much more.It's difficult to imagine America without the ACLU because they stand up to beliefs they don’t agree with to make everyone happy and to choose what they thinks truly right to make a better

In October of 2008, Susan N. Harris was elected President of the American Civil Liberties Union, she also served for twenty consecutive years on the ACLU National Board of Directors, the General Counsel for ten years, and on the Executive Committee for sixteen years(American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.).

Over the last few centuries, the rights and freedoms of various citizens from the United States of America have been compromised throughout history. Racism in the USA has been a topic heavily debated over the years, from the beginning of the black slave trade in the early 17th century, to the movement that worked for the racial desegregation all over America. Although the black people of America have gone through a large struggle to gain their rights and freedoms, there has been success. These successes include the illegalisation of slavery in America, the racial desegregation of various facilities so they were able to be used equally and fairly by all American citizens, and the fall of the Ku Klux Klan and the illegalisation of their ideals

“Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden” (Desmond Tutu). America is truly shaped by human experiences. From The Triangle Trade, to our Founding Fathers owning slaves, to the Civil War, to Civil Rights Movement, and finally to today. Racism has led to a great deal of impaction on the United States. One event that rocked our nation would be the Scottsboro trials in the 1930’s. The Scottsboro case tragedy changed America because for the first time it was made public, heightened the nation's emotions and whites Southerners felt threatened by the colored and their advancements.

In America, people used to deal with racism daily in The Jim Crow South, the era of ‘Separate but equal.’ In the South, many people of African-American descent experienced racism seen never before. Since the 1960’s, Americans have tried, and tried again to fight for the rights of people, but it never seems like enough. People have long debated, and are still debating, about the issue of Jim Crow, and whether it still lives on today. The effects of The Jim Crow South today still negatively affecting African-Americans today in the south.

The United States of America has historical events that underlie the primary example of a country which overcomes every adversity with courage and commitment. Several pieces of history can obviously emphasize the strength of those who inhabited this nation and shaped it into what it is today; one of which is the era of slavery. Slavery is a topic that is often rejected during the mentioning of historical events in America primarily due to the fact that it contradicts what American culture advocates. When attempting to reprimand their previous discriminatory actions towards African Americans, many Americans often fail to realize the impact that African Americans truly had on this country. Without slavery, as inauspicious as the idea may sound, the framework of America would have not been established, its populational growth would not have been as rapid, and the amount of labor that induced economic and military success would be nearly impossible, thus leading to the conclusion that America would not have excelled without slavery.

Since the birth of the United States of America, African Americans have struggled for society to hear them and treat them as equals. In the 1800s, they fought for equality through the Civil War. Another big time period where African American strove for equality was The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which effectively changed crucial aspects of the nation and made great strides in the rights of African Americans in the United States.

The American Crisis African Americans have been and currently are the most persecuted ethnicity in American history. For hundreds of years, various sources and verification have proved that the American society have been targeting African Americans. Despite an ambition to end oppression towards the African American community have led to various prominent events, such as Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement, only legal issues have been solved. Although the Civil Rights Movement was capable of addressing some of the Reconstruction era’s biggest failures, the Reconstruction goal of creating a coequal society has never been obtained; although Reconstruction failed to obtain a balanced society, it is completed because many aspects, such

The great strong standing United States of America is known today as one of the most power houses in the world. The principles she was founded on included on freedom and prosperity for some. In the founding years of an entity the most work is done in laying down the foundation. America chose to complete the task of building a beautiful nation of freedom and prosperity through the exploitation of slaves. Today, blacks in America are still healing from the scars that slavery in America has written on African American DNA. The fruits of slavery produced the internalization of negative: mentalities, inferiority of identity, and images in black media.

From the moment Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America established itself as a nation built upon the foundation of equality. In the legendary document, Jefferson proclaimed, “all men... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Declaration).” Contradictorily, when the separatists fled England for an auspicious future in North America, their treatment of the Native American and Spanish occupants was inhumane, barbaric, and not becoming of a civilization ingrained with the principles of equality. Moreover, the pioneers of the “free” world marginalized, ostracized, and chimerically represented the African race more than any other minority. Paradoxically dubbed the “man of the people”, Thomas Jefferson illuminated his true interpretation of equality in Notes on the State of Virginia. “We have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history,” he wrote. “I advance it... that the blacks... are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind (history).” Despite what the media conveys, this belief system lingered and particularly exists in the Department of Justice. For years, our government controlled the amount of accessible, viable, and financially rewarding opportunities for impoverished African Americans through the surreptitious agendas of law enforcement. However, Los Angeles

The United States of America will always have to deal with problems regarding its own culture because of the historical meanings it holds. For many years though, they were simply overlooked because of the tremendous power held by the government and in the efforts of “overall development” of the country. W. E. B. Du Bois hit this point when he concluded his essay Strivings of the Negro People: “Merely a stern concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro problem... ...in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers' fathers, and in the name of human opportunity” (Du Bois 5). This emphasizes the mistreatment of the African-American population merely due to historical traditions.

Society has been significantly revolutionized since the beginnings of the United States. The very history of the country has been cursed with racism and the harsh oppression of minorities. In fact, America’s power and economy were founded on a Marxist theory of a two-class system. On the top of that system were the slave owners, and at the very bottom were the slaves themselves (Balkaran, 1999). Slavery and segregation used to be huge components in the lives of Americans. During those times, “Americans” were white, landowning men; obviously that principle has been altered a great deal. People of color, women, and the poor actually have been given suffrage by amendments in the Constitution. Although the United States’ culture and society

Due to his extremist ways of expressing himself and the ideas he has been pushing through the year, a lot of people and organizations have been created and reinforced to counteract on his acts. One great example of this is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which strives to not only protects immigrants from unjust treatment, but to make sure they keep their civil liberties as well as their civil rights.

The United States of America is known as a country of independence, liberty, and rights; within the lines of our national anthem the Stars Spangled Banner, it is clear to see how the phrases "the land of the free and home of the brave", symbolize the ideals that have been centralized into the American Society for hundreds of years. Despite being recognized as a world power; for its military structure and the "believed" system of possibilities in terms of self advancement, the United States of America houses a very dark and inhumane secret; a sociological failure that perhaps is called that way, given the as a nation, we neglect, fail to address, and persecute those that because of their inherited skin color, look different than the accepted sociological norm of whiteness. It is shameful, to me at least, that the term "American" is a representation of the world 's largest incarceration rate; it’s even more shameful, how we prosecute, isolate, and declare what President Nixon once believed was the proper measure to take on poor communities; the war on drugs. For hundreds of years, we as a country have idealized with what Mustafa Emirbayer & Matthew Desmond have identified in their book Racial Domination, Racial Progress the Sociology of Race in America, as a mistake; mistake that has cost thousands of minorities their reputations and has impacted not only their tranquility, but their overall success rate in the promised land of opportunities.

All Throughout American history there has been a struggle by Blacks to gain equal access and equal rights. African Americans have struggled for legal, political, and social equality since early colonial times. In post Civil War America, Blacks were granted freedom, but were still denied equal rights through legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws. However, in the mid nineteenth century there was a turn in attitude of Black people, as they were tired of discrimination and started protesting for their rights. It was during this time of the Civil Rights Movement that Freedom of peoples expanded. Through protest they gained