Black Political Power - Research Paper Example

? Black Political Power without the Black Political Power without the Black politics has had contributions of many individuals who threw their weight in fighting for their freedom. While some of these individuals held significant titles in the black politics, others played the role of activism. Their contribution to the movement cannot be underestimated, with some being detained while others were imprisoned solely for the purpose of making their demands known. Both men and women have served various roles in the fight for equality in America, in every aspect of life. Discrimination from attending certain schools and colleges, to discrimination against using public transportation, and even the world of entertainment, an end to black slavery were among some of the reasons these people were ready to lose their lives for (Anderson, 2006). One of these activists is Ida B. Wells, an African-American Journalist who was a newspaper editor and a suffragist. She was married to Ferdinand L. Barnett, who was an early leader in the civil rights movement. She was born in Holly Springs in Mississippi in 1862, almost the time Abraham Linchlon the then president issued the Emancipation Proclamation which saw both of her parents released from slavery. Wells attended school in Shaw University, and got expelled because of her rebellious behaviour, to the point of confronting the president of the college. When her parents died during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878 that swept the South, she was employed as a teacher in an elementary school where she was paid only $ 30 per month in comparison to fellow white teachers who earned $ 80 in a month. The disparity in the salary and evident discrimination angered Wells to the point of sparking more interest in politics. When in Memphis, where she had relocated in 1883, Wells refused to give up her seat in a train to a white and move to the smoking car. In the previous year, the Supreme Court had revised the federal rights act of 1875 that banned racial discrimination in public places, although some railroads kept practicing the vice. She was dragged out of the coach by the conductor, and it was out of this harassment that she sued the railroad. She won the case in December 1884, and wrote an article, “The Living Way” in a newspaper about the treatment. Some of her notable acts of activism include an article she wrote in Free speech and headlight that urged blacks to leave Memphis, which led to about 6000 people leaving, while others organized boycotts (Fradin & Fradin, 2000). Quitting teaching, she begun investigative journalism and together with Frederick Douglass and other African Americans, they organized the Chicago boycott of 1893 and died in 1931 at the age of 68 with a record of speaking against anti-lynching and written various works of activism like the “Red Record” and the “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases.” She travelled far and wide including Europe and Great Britain, preaching antiracism. Another key political leader in the black politics who did not hold a political title was Frederick Douglass, who was a poet and an activist against slavery. He was born into slavery in 1818 in Talbot County in Maryland, to become a prominent intellectual who lectured to many people and advised presidents. When in slavery at the home of Hugh Auld, his wife Sophia taught him to read the alphabet at the age of 12, helping him acquire the skills that would latter Vault him to national celebrity. In his course of reading, he developed the ideological of opposition, after reading newspaper articles about slavery. He got interested in political writing and literature. In 1833, while working for Thomas Auld, they had a fight in which Auld lost in the physical confrontation. After escaping from slavery in 1838, he got married to Anna Murray and they both moved to Massachusetts where he became an anti-slavery lecturer. He wrote an autobiography of his life story in 1845 named “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, which became a bestseller in the United States and was latter translated in several European languages. He published my “Bondage and My Freedom” in 1855 and in 1881 “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.” He later went to Ireland to avoid his recapture, and remained there for two years, talking and preaching about the evils of slavery (Spengler, 2006). His British supporters raised funds hat purchased his legal freedom and returned to the United States in 1847 as a free man. On his return, he produced “The North Star”, “Fredrick Douglass weekly”, “Fredrick Douglass’ Paper”, “Douglass’ Monthly” and “New National Era” which were abolitionists. He was vocal in fighting for women’s rights to be allowed to vote. During the civil war, he was among the most famous black Americans. His death in 1895 is believed to have been caused by either a heart attack or stroke. Ruby Bridges became known for being the first black child to attend a school meant for only the white, William Trantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She was born in 1954 in Mississippi, but her family relocated to New Orleans when she was only at a tender age of four. Her parents allowed her to become a volunteer among other black children to participate in the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People when she was the age of six. In 1960, she and six others passed the test to that was a determiner of whether they would attend the school, and while she joined the school, the rest opted to go somewhere else. The moment she joined the school, white parents withdrew their children from the school, while teachers refused to teach simply because a black student had been enrolled (Coles & Ford, 2010). The first day when she got enrolled, there were numerous chaos aimed at preventing her from going to class, and together with her adult companions, they remained the entire day in the principal’s office. Among all the teachers in the school, only Barbara Henry from Boston Massachusetts volunteered to teach her for over a year. She faced various accounts of unjust treatment, with one woman threatening to poison her every morning as she walked to school, the other protested with a black baby doll in a wooden coffin outside the school. This sight scared Bridges more than anything that she had ever witnessed in the school, and made her need the services of a volunteer child psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Coles. Her father, for choosing to take her to an all-white school lost his job they were prevented from shopping at their popular grocery store while their grandparents in Mississippi were turned off their land. Despite the many incidences of discrimination, certain people supported her and the family, with a neighbour offering her father a new job, neighbours watched and sat by their house as protectors while she walked behind a federal marshal’s car on her way to school. She was awarded the Presidential Citizen Medal in 2001 by President Bill Clinton, in 2006 the Alameda Unified School District in her honour dedicated a new elementary school to her and issued a proclamation. She was awarded with the honour of Anti-Defamation Legume’s Concert against Hate, and in 2007, a new exhibit documenting her life was unveiled by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Dred Scott, an African-American slave in the United States successfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and two daughters in the famous case known as “the Dred Scott Decision” (January, 1998). He was born into slavery in 1795 in Southampton County, Virginia. The case held the facts that regardless of the fact of him and his wife being slaves, according to state law they had lived with their master Dr. John Emerson in states that had criminalized slavery. The case opened up the issue of slaves who were held in captivity and their status, despite living in a free state. Such states and territories’ law provided that a slaveholder forfeited his rights to property by the event that he held a slave captive in a state whose did not allow control of slaves. Scot often travelled with his master who was a surgeon in US army on his regular transfers under Army command. His stay with his master in Illinois which was a free state gave him the legal right to claim for his freedom, which was echoed by his extended stay at Fort Snelling in Wisconsin Territory where slavery was prohibited. After winning the case and being set free, Scott and his family went back to Emerson’s widow. He died of tuberculosis in 1858 and was buried in Wesleyan Cemetery in St. Louis. Rosa Parks is another activist who fought for the rights of blacks and was involved in the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. According to Collard (2007), she was born in 1913, Rosa became an African-American civil rights activist who was named “the first lady of civil rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement” by the congress. She disobeyed a bus driver who had given her an order of giving up her seat in the coloured section to a white passenger, after the white section had ran out of seats. After the boycott, which she collaborated and organized with other civil rights leaders, she became an international icon in the resistance for racial segregation. The boycott got her fired from her job in a local department store where she worked as a seamstress. She later moved to Detroit, Michigan where she found a similar job, before latter serving as a secretary and receptionist to John Conyers who was an African- American U.U representative. It was during her retirement that she made up her mind to write her autobiography, and died in 20065 at the age of 92. Efforts of these devoted individuals are evident in the American economy. The thriving class of tenuous middle class can attribute the success of their occupations, career, income and education to these very devoted activists. References Anderson, W. (2006). Fighting racial discrimination: Treating all Americans fairly under the law. New York: Rosen Pub. Group. Coles, R., & Ford, G. (2010). The story of Ruby Bridges. New York: Scholastic. Collard, S. B. (2007). Rosa Parks: The courage to make a difference. New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark. Fradin, D. B., & Fradin, J. B. (2000). Ida B. Wells: Mother of the civil rights movement. New York: Clarion Books. January, B. (1998). The Dred Scott decision. New York: Children's Press. Spengler, K. (2006). Frederick Douglass: Voice for freedom. Mankato, Minn: Capstone Press. Read More