HIST 113 | 1968: The Year That Rocked the World | Spring 2014 | Writing assignment II - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages This paper will focus on the social and economic injustices among the black Americans.
As Sandra West puts it in her story, the riots in Detroit led to 43 deaths, 7000 arrests and destruction of infrastructure. This tragic event was in protest of arrest of arrests of 82 revelers who were nabbed in an afterhours night club operations (Sandra, 35). It is reported that a crowd gathered around the police and the arrested individuals before they started throwing stones at the police. The police stood their ground in claiming that they had been provoked to act in the way they did. The cause of the attack on the police would never be established although it is suspected that they could be associated to the previous loss of jobs (Sandra, 37).
In order to advocate for economic justice, Reverend Martin Luther King, a civil rights activist led various peaceful riots in this year shortly before his assassination on March 4th 1968 during another peaceful riot in Tennessee. At the time of his death, Martin Luther King had a peaceful riot coming up dubbed the Poor Peoples March. The living conditions of African Americans were wanting. Although the civil rights had been observed, poverty along ethnic and racial lines were still dominant. The census conducted in 1960 showed that 35 million Americans lived in poverty. It is for this reason that violence was rampant among the residence of the poor who were mostly black Americans (Bruce, 1863).
In conclusion, the Americas black community never despaired despite all the barriers to freedom and emancipation. Despite the assassination of Martin Luther King, the march still went on. This proves the height of need in the Black American community which lacked appropriate attention. The story by Sandra West who was a journalist, brings the dark day of Detroit which resulted in the Kerner Commission Report demanded by the President Kennedy (McNeese, ...Download file to see next pagesRead More