Freedom from Want - Essay Example

In the mid-twentieth century, African Americans were at the peak of their resistance to racism. It was a call to transform the world from social and economic evils. Before that, the social and economic ravages were deep-rooted and encompassed the community because of Jim Crow-era racism. Nonetheless, the black freedom movement and the labor movement rose like a phoenix against economic issues and labor and residential discrimination to fight for freedom, with emphasis on freedom from want (Gresser7). The African American Civil Rights Movement and the American Labor Movement were the backbone of the current racial and labor freedom, as well as the strengthening of the American economy.

            The white power had been innovative and persuasive, thus fighting its principles of racism and economic disempowerment of African American required improvised and unrelenting tactics and strategies. What we currently refer to as the Civil Rights Movement was in an actual sense a struggle, or “a battleground between slavery and liberty”, for freedom and liberty by African Americans, extending beyond the simple objectives of advocating for legal rights. Some of the actions involved in the fight for freedom ranged from mass action protests and boycotts to armed self-defense. Racial freedom was in the air, and so were economic independence and security (Gresser 32). The African Americans were tired of enduring a physical, economic, and social setup enforced by white supremacy in the country’s policies. The political and social policies of Jim Crow of segregating public facilities ensured that all social amenities were unequal and different, from restrooms to gravesites. Despite the Great Migration that brought around six million blacks into industrial centers in the Northern and Southern urban, African Americans were still contained to domestic and retail work, and even those who found their way to industries were locked out of unions.

            The Second World War was a helping hand for the economy of the US to recover from the Great Depression of the late 1920s. African Americans were on the margins of prosperity, as the federal defense had not desegregated the armed forces, jobs, and housing. The blacks were now in an unfamiliar position, between European imperialism, American white supremacy, and Nazi racism. This led to protests by the blacks and a threat by the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) Philip Randolph to lead the 100,000 people March on Washington Movement if industrial desegregation was not effected. President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed Executive Order 8802 creating a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which triggered the postponement of the march. Black organizations, notably the National Negro Congress, the BSCP, and the MOWM joined labor unions and politicians to present economic issues to the statehouse demanding equal rights to social benefits of the New Deal (Gresser 59). At around the same time, President Roosevelt delivered a speech proclaiming the four freedoms: worship, want, fear, and speech and expression. The African Americans were challenging the freedom from want citing that ghettos were present in Berlin, as well as Boston.  

            The Cold War was a challenge to the US as communist enemies like the Soviet Union constantly challenged the self-proclaimed status of America as a “Leader of the Free world” yet had anti-black racism. Racism was one of the major causes of African American poverty, and the fight for freedom by the Civil Movement ensured that the dream of President Roosevelt to establish freedom from want was achievable, at least to some degree.

            The American labor movements began in 1869 with the formation of the Order of the Knights of Labor led by Terence V. Powderly, a Pennsylvanian machinist. The purpose of the Knight Union was to negation power for all American workers through unions. Blacks joined the union later. From the pressure of the labor movement activists, President Roosevelt designed a 100-day relief legislation enacting the 1933 National Industry Recovery Act, which encourages the collective bargaining of workers' unions, regulated working hours and wage rates, set the minimum wage standard, and prohibited child labor. Later, there were amendments to the NRA Act of 1933 to establish the National Labor Relations Board in the Wagner Act of 1935 (Gresser 126). Further sit-down strikes by workers further pressed Congress to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 that was advocating for the maintenance of a favorable minimum standard of living essential for the efficiency, well-being, and health of workers.