...Uncovering the Truth Behind Lynchings in the U.S. Lynching remains to be a very controversial and important subject matter in African American history. The topic of lynching is a key aspect of African American studies not only because it reveals the hypocrisy of White supremacist ideologies of equality in the United States, but it also can be used as a tool to help transform the entire social and political structure of American society. In a Christian nation that advocates equal rights for its citizens, how are acts such as lynching and other radical acts of violence be supported by most people of the White community? It was not only mob groups such as the Ku Klux Klan who were eliciting such cruel behavior, but everyday citizens like you and I. Families, couples, politicians, or anyone who wanted to be a part of this murderous spectacle were easily permitted to watch or participate in the lynchings. The murders of innocent African American citizens were becoming more of an extravaganza for the White community and many people travelled to come watch the “show.” American institutionalized racism has continually allowed this perception of the Black community as inferior to Whites. It is through the study of lynching can we discover that lynching is caused solely by the problem of the color-line and that the justifications used by white supremacists were untrue. African American studies helps find the real truth about lynching and not a fabricated story by white academic...
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...Nina Wohl Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences AHIS W4855 African American Artists in the 20th and 21st Centuries Spring 2012 Research Paper – African American Art & the Great Depression The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn of the twentieth century. The federal government took unprecedented action to provide relief, recovery and reform. No group was harder hit by the Great Depression than African Americans. The New Deal was slow to deal with the unique situation faced by African Americans. The struggles of the Great Depression laid the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Art would play an important role in influencing the future. Despite its limitations, the New Deal, through the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Arts Program (FAP), was responsible for reshaping the cultural agenda and “marked a significant turning point in the production of black culture.”1 The artists of the Great Depression built upon the work done during the Harlem Renaissance. New Deal art extended and affirmed art that translated “politics into cultural terms.”2 The FAP looked for a “new sense of authentic American culture – one that championed national values and traditions by celebrating regional and racial diversity.”3 As a result, many artists worked to place African Americans in the historical narrative of the United States while combating long held stereotypes. None were less important than Aaron Douglas...
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...The history of racial violence in the United States of America is extensive and complex, woven through centuries of dehumanization and bigotry. From the days of chattel slavery to the Jim Crow era to the modern day Black Lives Matter movement, racism towards African Americans throughout American history is displayed in a variety of ways. One such example of the social terror that African Americans experienced was that of the race riots of the late 19th and 20th centuries. This essay will explore one of the most prominent examples of race riots: the Tulsa Race Massacre, its details, and the social and historical context that led to the tragedy. The Tulsa Race Massacre took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma between May 31 and June 1, 1921, with the violence centred in Tulsa’s Greenwood district. The Greenwood district was...
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...Ida B. Wells’ Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography, is one of the most inspiring stories throughout African American history. As an activist and civil rights leader, Ida B. Wells played an important role in establishing African American women’s ability to secure and use the right to vote. In the south, lynching, killing by mobs usually hanged, often involved gruesome injury as well as murder, were popular events in the post-Reconstruction.(pg.331). However, Ida B. Wells took matters into her own hands and contributed significantly to increase public awareness about the terrors of lynching, a movement that led to the classification of lynching as a federal crime. Born in 1862 in Mississippi, Ida B. Wells was orphaned at the age of sixteen by a yellow...
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...the discrimination and mistreatment that African Americans were being put through. The book takes place in 1930's Alabama, in the midst of the Great Depression. It is narrated by a young girl named Scout Finch who retells her experiences as a child when her father was defending...
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...Racism has affected the history and major events that lead up to our present day world. Real-life events are used to support Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird. There are connections to Jim Crow, mob mentality, and the issues of racism and inequality in that time period. To start, the Jim Crow laws, which were a huge part of American history back then, are represented in the novel several times. The Jim Crow laws were a set of laws that placed African Americans much lower in society. White Americans thought the laws were needed because they wanted there to be a big gap between the two races. A few examples of the Jim Crow laws are separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, bus rules, and segregation of schools. If these laws are not...
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...they did and how they changed American society. Find out what motivated them to action and how it changed American culture or politics. Write in MLA format with works cited. Write your letter and be sure to include the following: why civic and political participation is important how the person influenced change what issues or events motivated the person to action why the person deserves a national holiday how society is different because of the person's work how you and others living today benefit from his or her efforts Ida B. Wells deserves a National Holiday to honor her civic and political participation for women’s suffrage and civil rights. Even though she was a teacher in her early life, at a young age, Ida B. Wells witnessed the lynchings of young African-Americans and wanted to make change. From there, she eventually became a journalist and became part-owner of the Memphis Free Speech. Wells was an active journalist that exposed the harshness of the lynchings that occurred, and was an active women’s rights suffrage supporter. Commonly in these times, she would’ve been considered a “muckraker”. Politically, she was an active citizen who wanted to tell the public what was going on in the African American culture, and because of this, she showed how being participating in government can affect what happens in the legislative and judicial branch. When Wells’ articles about lynching and about white women pursuing...
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...Women in southern history were truly great people. They made a huge impact on traditions, laws, and people's overall perspective of women. From the time of Reconstruction to Second Wave Feminism, the women were considered to be politicians, suffragists, and some would even classify them as heroes to other women in the world. They played major roles in stopping the segregation and discrimination against African American people, helping women gain the right to vote, and helping the men of that era gain progress. The women that were determined to make a change also made an impact on other women that thought there was no chance of women gaining any rights in the United States, including African American women. After women were exposed to such...
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...Hate Crimes Against African-American Tonja Charletta Cash 4/29/12 Hate Crimes Against African Americans Two African-American, 16 year old girls were walking home from a school function. They were walking through a predominately white neighborhood. One was wearing her school cheerleading outfit and the other was wearing a hoodie, and it was covering her head. Which one will be racially profiled? Hate crimes happen in small towns and large cities. They happen in every state: north, south, east, and west. They involve everything from simple graffiti to brutal murders. They may be called hate crimes, bias crimes, civil rights crimes, or ethnic intimidation. Hate crimes are crimes committed because of the race, releigion, sexual orientation, or other group memebership of the victim. The precise groups that are included in the definition of hate crime vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. African-Americans have been targeted for generations. There have been many white against black crimes, and police against black crimes. Has there been any improvement in the last 50 years? Racially motivated attacks agaist African-Americans rose more than 8% in 2008. While crimes...
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...DuBois. Critically evaluate the strength and weaknesses of each.” Black History 140B Professor Katungi 3-12-03 Booker Taliaferro Washington was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin Country, Virginia in 1856. One of our nations most powerful black educators; he illustrated his belief in the dignity of work. He was very skilled in politics and influential for both black and white communities. “There was no period of my life that was devoted to play.” He expressed his concept of hard work was the cornerstone of his social philosophy. Booker T. became a principle and guiding force behind Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institution in Hampton, Alabama during 1881. He felt that industrial education was a way out from the horrible sharecropping and debt. His plan also wanted to achieve self-employment, land ownership and small businesses. “Yet one has the hand in all things essential to mutual progress”, being a personal quote from Booker T. at the Atlanta Compromise address in 1895. His major role was to influence the area of race relations and black leadership. He attacked racism and secretly founder of many anti-segregationist activities. Booker T. wanted to help black Americans rise up from the economic slavery, that had held them down long after they were legally free citizens. As being a dominant figure in black public affairs from 1895 until his death, he spoke heavily against lynching and worked towards making “separate” facilities more “equal”. Being a confident...
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...During the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States had imported and sold millions of Africans in the United States, forcing them into slave labor for virtually their entire lives. Although slavery did not end until midway into the 19th century, this failed to stop slaves who ran away, killed their masters, or purchased their freedom. Moreover, the effects from this period in U.S history still has an impact in today’s society. During the late 20th century, a letter from an alleged speech in the early 18th century surfaced claiming responsibility for the many methods and psychological trauma used in slavery. Although the letter is very attentive and thought-provoking, I believe the letter is false because of its use of words in that period of time, lack of information of the author, and lack of evidence to be used in a referential context....
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...The United States is a nation that has an extensive history and many different eras that have resulted in large changes in the political, economic, and social world. One such era is the Progressive Era, which consisted of large political reform and activism through social communities that would, in short, fight against corruption, inefficiency, and monopolies. During this time, many social figures would become well known for their advocacy and effort in trying to make the nation better as a whole. One such figure is Ida B. Wells, an African American woman who was born in 1862 as a slave during the Civil War. Ida B. Wells was a muckraker, or reform-focused investigative journalist, who wrote continuously about the horrors of racism in the Jim...
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...the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. By Lewis Allan, 1940 These words paint a picture and speak of an unpleasant time in American history, where blatant racism, lynchings and inequalities were committed against African Americans. Strange fruit can be considered a protest song of the pre-civil rights era. Its importance to the movement can be felt in the lyrics of the song paving the way for protest songs of the civil rights era and its impact on the world today. Strange Fruit was composed by Abel Meerpol, a school teacher from the Bronx, NY who wrote a poem under the pseudonym Lewis Allan (Independent Lens, 2003) about the horrors of racism after seeing graphic photos of a lynching of two teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. These teenagers, who were accused of killing a white man, were taken from an Indiana jail and lynched by a mob of angry whites (Koppes, 2010). Their bodies badly beaten and burned, left hanging from a tree their bodies blowing with the wind for the world to see. Although there were lynchings in the North, the majority of lynchings were in the South (Stone, 2004). The victims, most often African American were guilty of nothing more than being black. They were tortured, abused and murdered in...
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...African American Criminological Thought Book Report Sharon Francis University of Houston- Downtown This report is based upon the book African American Criminological Thought, written by Helen Taylor Greene, Shauan L Gabbion with forewords by Julius Debro. This book is published by the State University of New York and is copyrighted 2000 by Helen Taylor Greene, Shauan L Gabbion with forewords by Julius Debro. These authors are well educated and well known by many different individuals from other books that they have published. This report will show how several different scholars made and influenced the world despite of many events, these criminologist does fit into the history of events that have happened or is still happing in...
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...During the 19th century long into the 20th century lynching, became a popular form of punishment. Generally this punishment was only reserved for the most vile of criminals, but during this particular time in our history being a specific ethnicity was the crime, racial tension grew throughout the United States and lynching was often accompanied by sever beatings, and humiliating taunts issued by a leering crowd. Lynching, in the United States, has influenced and been influenced by the major social conflicts in the country, revolving around the American frontier, Reconstruction, and the American Civil Rights Movement. Originally, lynching meant any extra-judicial punishment, including tarring and feathering and running out of town, but during the 19th century in the United States, it began to be used to refer specifically to murder, usually by hanging. lynching was seen by some as a positive alternative and by others a negative alternative. . On the American frontier, where the power of the police and the army was tenuous to, lynching was seen by some as a positive alternative complete lawlessness. In the Reconstruction-era South, lynching of blacks was used, especially by the first Ku Klux Klan, as a tool for reversing the social changes brought on by Federal occupation. This type of racially motivated lynching continued in the Jim Crow era as a way of enforcing subservience and preventing economic competition, and into the twentieth century as a method of resisting the civil...
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