Freedom

  Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago , Illinois . When he was 14 years old his uncle Moses Wright took him to Mississippi to visit relatives. During his stay, Emmett stopped at a grocery store for some bubble gum but ended up being accused of flirting or touching the hand of the white female clerk and wife of the owner Carolyn Bryant. 4 days later Carolyn’s husband Roy Bryant and his half brother kidnapped Emmett from his uncles home. Taking him to the Tallahatchie River and these two men beat him then shot him in the head. They preceded by tieing him with barbed wire to a large metal fan and pushing his beaten body into the water. When his body was found it was shipped to his home town Chicago. His mother chose to have an open-casket funeral with Emmett Tills' body on display for five days. His mother chose to do so to “let the world see what has happened because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like.” Ti...

  During class, we read Professor Dean Smith’s academic paper, “ The Real Story Behind the Nation's First Shield Law: Maryland, 1894–1897 ”  The primary concepts in this paper are the ideas of Popular Constitutionalism and Non-Judicial Precedents. “Popular constitutionalism," is a system where the people take an active role in interpreting and enforcing constitutional law. This concept is one where the populous changes the meaning of the constitution thereby making it a living, breathing document seen with an "interpretive view" (Smith).  “Judicial supremacy," the antithesis of popular constitutionalism, is what most people associate with how laws are defined. As expected, when it comes to this understanding, judges are deemed to have the ultimate and only say on what the Constitution means. Professor Smith’s second main concept is “non-judicial precedents,” which encompass constitutional actions handed out by authorities other than courts. Non-judicial preced...

  “I Have a Dream” March The road to the infamous “I Have a Dream” March in Washington was a long time coming. Just short of one hundred years since the U.S. Fourteenth Amendment had been passed, equality was still not a reality for black citizens. In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was known as the most segregated city in America. In May of that year, more than a thousand African American students attempted to peacefully march into downtown Birmingham. These marchers were arrested by the hundreds. Film crews caught the violence on camera for all to see. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on media outlets everywhere. These images spark national as well as an international outrage. In the wake of these violent attacks, momentum began to build for a mass protest on the nation’s capital. Many in the Civil Rights movement felt President John F. Kennedy needed to take a stand and fulfill his campa...

  The documentary, "Klansville U.S.A.," follows the Klan’s early beginnings, dormant stage, its popular resurrection in the ‘20s, and its mid-’60s unexpected rise in North Carolina.    The Ku Klux Klan started in 1865, as a Tennessee social club of decommissioned confederate officers. Taking its name from the Greek word for circle, kuklos, it became a brotherhood of people bent on controlling the freed slaves. Klan activities started as pranks to terrify their intended victims. Their acts became increasingly violent, including murder. The federal government’s clamping down on the Klan, in 1871 resulted in the Klan dissolving and lying dormant for decades. Following the popular 1915 film “Birth of a Nation,” which portrayed the Klan as heroic figures who simply restored order to the chaotic South, the Klan was revived. This time the Klan was not a rural group. It was popular in big cities like Denver, Settle, and Detroit. Having a large and growing membership gave the Kla...

  Brown vs Board of Education Who did Brown represent and what did they want? Oliver Brown, a black resident of Topeka, Kansas, attempted to enroll his daughter in the school closest to their home. The Topeka school district denied her admittance and required her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school further away. Mr. Brown brought a case against the school district’s action. The District Court in Topeka determined that segregation in public education does have a detrimental effect upon black children, but it denied Brown relief on the ground that the black and the white schools were, “substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers.” Brown and twelve other black families, in comparable circumstances, filed a class-action lawsuit against Topeka Board of Education in U.S. federal court. The plaintiffs asserted that the Board’s segregation mandate was unconstitutional. By the time their case rea...

  A poll tax sign in Mineola, Texas, 1939. Russell Lee, FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Are poll taxes something new? The word "poll" comes from a German word for "head.” Taxing a set amount levied on each individual, or “head.” By the 1690s, the phrase “poll tax” became a substitute for “head tax.” Poll taxes in the American colonies were per person taxes paid before the American Revolution. Though technically a revenue measure, the enactment of poll taxes was more recently used as a disfranchising device that had political implications. With this tax, one party and its political elite could completely dominate the power structure. When and why did poll taxes become disfranchising agents in America? Most of these disfranchising measures originated in the late 1890s in response to the success of the People’s Party in the South. During the 1880s the Negroes and white farmers combined in the People’s Party. This party nearly broke the political...