Selma Rodrigues-Brown was a lifetime resident of Baltimore. She grew up in what she called the hood. She was all of five feet two inches tall, black nappy hair, and her complexion was very dark and she was mean as hell. She was the leader of Uptown Crips. It was highly unusual to have a woman in that leadership spot. At thirty-two years of age, she had fought and killed her way to the top, she had the members’ respect, only to the point where they all knew she would have them killed in a heartbeat. For Selma the event was a blessing sent by God for her specifically. She was able to consolidate her power over the city, by brute force, within three months after the event. Selma was successful in creating a mega-alliance with the rest of the gangs in the city, with her at the top. Prior to the event Law Enforcement estimated there were close to ten thousand gang members in all of Baltimore. The number was much higher now. The citizens of Baltimore had to commit to a gang, or leave town and die—those were their only choices. Now it was closer to twenty-five thousand; however, prior to the event Baltimore had a population of over six hundred thousand people. The twenty-five thousand were the number of soldiers that were counted to help fight and defend the city, if it ever came to that. Everyone else in the city was considered an affiliate of the gang. The population of Baltimore now, a year later, was closer to eighty-seven thousand. The first months of the event
Vivian Osborne Marsh was one of the most influential black women in the San Franscisco area. Marsh served her community as an activist and government official.
“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools”( Martin Luther King Jr.). Between 1961 and 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led a voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama. It was a small town with a record of consistent resistance to black voting and black people in general. Between 17 and 50 people were injured in the first march known as “Bloody Sunday,” with one woman, Amelia Boynton nearly beat to death. Members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were persuaded by local activities to make Selma’s intransigence to African Americans voting. There were six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7. The march to Selma, Alabama was one of the most historically
For Selma the event was a blessing sent by God for her specifically, she was able to consolidate her power over the city, by brute force, within three months after the event. Selma was successful in creating a mega-alliance with the
As a young colored women living in LA County, I have always been fascinated with the police approach and attitudes towards minorities and rural part of LA. I was aware with the gangs’ situation in major cities of country, including LA. Yet, I was unaware of the history and rise of gangs etc. When I came across the movie,”Bastards of the Party”, I was thrilled and excited. I could relate to this documentary with the theories such as racial segregation and white supremacy. I was also able to relate to this documentary with Coates reading the “between the world and me.” Coates work is not a work of inspiration or optimism. It is not written for white people - not written to comfort them, pat them on the back for their occasional acknowledgment
The Baltimore alliance consist of black abolitionist William Watkins, Jack Greener, and Hezekiah Grice. They were opponents of the ACS and work in Baltimore with Benjamin Lundy. He was a white abolitionist, who had an antislavery newspaper. In addition, these men had a strong influence on William Lloyd Garrison, who later became the “ most influential American antislavery leader”(169). Furthermore, these abolitionists believed that free people should have immediate freedom, equal civil rights, and that the American Colonization Society was harmful to blacks.
The simple game of basketball introduced in 1891 has slowly changed over time in response to new social and political changes occurring in the U.S. The jazz age contained the New York Renaissance, more commonly known as the Harlem Rens, who were the first all-African American professional basketball team. The Rens, through incorporating their black style of improvisational play on the court, differed greatly from all other teams, and earned their title as world champions. As world champions, the Rens were still subject to racial discrimination, but through their success, they were able to create awareness of their talent, develop a following of support with African Americans, and break racial barriers along the way. The black style and sportsmanship the Rens displayed produced many accomplishments breaking racial barriers in a manner that influenced the next generations to continue from, paving the way towards achieving racial equality.
I found Michelle Alexander’s argument extremely effective to show the ways in which the history of America has been denied by the constant struggle between those who exacerbate the racial caste system, subordinating people of color to an inferior social position, and those who advocate for racial equality.
What if social tensions between whites and blacks were relieved? For most African Americans, that was not the case. The early twentieth century was characterized by racial segregation and great economic hardship. While many were subject to the threat of Jim Crow laws on a daily basis, others became victims of farmers’ debt. Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon fueled the Great Migration, where more than six million African Americans escaped from the rural South and migrated to major communities in the North and West in search of economic opportunity and success. Located in the heart of New York City, Harlem served as a transit neighborhood, harboring around 200,000 African Americans in 1920 (Norton, Sheriff, and Blight). An acclaimed historian, Clement Prince, once said, “Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance,” (Clement). The words of Clement Prince describe the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement, an intellectual explosion that brought unprecedented changes to African American music, poetry, dance, and literature. One of the many influential figures in the Harlem Renaissance was Adelaide Hall, a prominent African American entertainer and jazz singer. Through her pioneering of jazz and scat singing, Adelaide Hall sparked an
One of them is such as the residents were working on voting rights long before even Martin Luther King Jr. decided to go there. Also, the youth campaigners of the students had almost written off organizing in Selma. In February 1963, he came to Selma and began working with other local residents to help prepare black Selma residents to overcome the walls that region, officials had put in place to deny blacks the right to register. “One of the most significant features of the movie as it relates to present day America are the many barriers that were put forth to block people from exercising their right to vote such as poll taxes, ridiculous qualification tests, literacy exams, morality requirements, property ownership requirements, and voter voucher laws to name a few.” (Bright, Marcus). This is significant because it also happens in these present days of America, there has been a lot of sins related to this. And most of this happens to dark skinned
They did not appreciate Charles and his actions; this lead to a riot. A large white mob was formed where the two police men were injured wanted to end Robert Charles’s life because of what he has done. They wanted to be killed without being given a trial. The mob consisted of people from Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and other surround states. On July 23, word had gotten out that Charles was killed. This was not the case and Charles was very much still alive and hiding from the police. Many African Americans who were in trouble, were running and hiding from the police at this time. Many people mistook Charles for those people. After the people found out that Charles was not dead, they were angry again. The mob roamed through the city trashing and terrorizing New Orleans’s African American community. They stormed the African American business district only to find it deserted. Over the course of three days, the angry mob took the innocent lives of several African Americans and injured several more. By having these riots, they people hoped to restore some justice in the
“The Republic of East L.A. Stories” captures the heartbreaking experiences Mexican-American’s were forced to endure. Escaping poverty, alcohol abuse, drug use, and gang violence was an everyday struggle for many families during this time. African American and Latino gangs were initially created as a response to white racism. They were restricted as to what areas they could live in and where constantly harassed. As their populations increased, so did white gangs, in order to take control of their “territory”. African Americans and Latinos had no choice but to protect their families by fighting back. As time went on, the violence only continued. The Civil Rights Movement led many gang members to join organizations like the Black Panther Party, but the government quickly responded by breaking them up and soon enough, street gangs quickly returned. The violence escalated, alcohol,
Gwendolyn Brooks often expressed the prejudices of being an African American in her writing. In her 1959 popular poem “We Real Cool,” published as part of “The Bean Eaters” (Layng), Gwendolyn Brooks educates readers on what often befell African American youths that chose to leave school and engage in illegal activities. The poem describes
Why do we value hip hop artists and cool shoes while forgetting and leaving out some of the most important people in the American history like Charlotte Hawkins Brown? Charlotte Hawkins Brown was an African American woman who deserved at least a ¹/₃ of the American History Book because she was a person who devoted her entire life to bettering and equaling education rights for colored students and someone worth being known about. Brown was born on June, 11 1883 in Henderson North Carolina. Charlotte Hawkins brown was a granddaughter of a former slave. When Brown was 12 years old she was involved in Civic, and/or involvement (Unknown D²). Charlotte Hawkins Brown was also someone who suffered through segregation and the Jim Crow laws growing up, but she did not let the inequality, unfairness and mistreatment stop her from reaching her goal and target which was to have a successful educational career. She moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts at a very young age to attend Cambridge English Public School in which she excelled as a student. When she was a senior in high school, Brown had a chance meeting with the prominent educator Alice Freeman Palmer, who was impressed to find the young woman reading Virgil while pushing the stroller of a child she was babysitting to raise money.Palmer would play a profound role in Brown 's life, first by paying for her college education at the State Normal School at Salem, Massachusetts, and then by encouraging Brown to return to her native
We are all humans, but somehow some people had made the standard and separated people by nation and skin colors. For the word racism, Racism is the "Hatred" of one person by another, based on the belief that that person is inferior because of their skin color, language, customs, place of birth, or other similar traits.Racism has existed throughout human history, often providing justification for one group's dominance over another. Most people, even if they do not approve of overt racism, nonetheless have some kind of prejudice against another group of people, and these prejudices can lead to hurt, anger, and even violence at both the personal and societal levels (“How to stop being racisms”). Nowaday in United State still have some racisms. It probably would be from the old fashion. And also we could see that even United State has been change attitude after Civil war, which just happened not long time ago.
Thus preventing more tragedies like the one that happened between the black people of Selma, Alabama, Alabama Police and State Troopers. Dr. King's group attempted to march on the capitol but were stopped by Law Enforcement. State Troopers and Local Law Enforcement used clubs and tear gas in order to get the large group to disperse. The State Troopers and Local Law Enforcement beat the people in the march from Selma to Montgomery severely to deter them from trying again. This was an unconstitutional, and inhumane act condoned by the Governor of Alabama at