The Importance Of Social Justice

We are living in an era of contradictions. While we should focus on building a unified approach towards fighting a global pandemic, we are more divided than ever. We are more connected than ever before in human history, yet are unable to understand the plight of others. We see an evolution of human rights, but see no end to conflict. We are more willing to accept differences, yet discrimination is on the rise. We are living in an era where we have greater freedoms than ever before, yet we see no end to injustice. So where do we go from

Read More

The Free People of Color – Definition, Context and Disambiguation

Very few slave owners engaged in voluntary manumission until the revolution and the Civil War. Many slave owners took advantage of the power dynamics and engaged in sexual relations with their slaves. Sometimes these relationships lasted for extended periods of time. Very frequently, these relationships resulted in the birth of children – most of whom were not usually emancipated in English speaking colonies. However, it was more common in Spanish and French colonies such as those in South America and the Caribbean, for colonial fathers to acknowledge and emancipate children born of relations with African slaves. While there were numerous

Read More

Black Suffrage – A History of African American Voting Rights

Suffrage, in a democratic system of government, is the right to vote and actively participate in the election of political representatives and other public officials. It may also extend to include the right to reject legislation. Universal political suffrage in the United States, or political franchise, has been a gradual process of the extension of voting rights from privileged groups such as white male Americans to the entire adult population. In many parts of the world, exclusion from the voting process has often been based on factors such as race, gender, religion, social class, residency, criminality, and literacy among many

Read More

Defining Police Brutality in the U.S

Contrary to popular opinion, police brutality is not a new issue nor is it limited to the United States. It has a long global history. However, the first step in understanding the different aspects of police brutality is defining it. In the American context, Britannica defines it as, ‘the unwarranted or excessive and often illegal use of force against civilians by U.S police officers.’ Actions that may be regarded as police brutality include physical assault and battery, torture, manhandling and murder. However, many consider verbal and physical harassment, threats and false arrests to constitute police brutality as well. On a

Read More

The Importance of Gender Equality

Defining Gender Equality Gender equality is the idea that everyone, regardless of gender, has equal access to resources and opportunities. These include access to education, economic participation and independence, and political participation and representation. This means that gender is irrelevant when it comes to valuing different behaviors, aspirations, needs, and opinions equally. The idea of gender equality also extends to the legal, social, and political rights, freedoms and protections that a state must offer to all citizens regardless of gender. Origins of Gender Inequality According to a study published in the European Journal of Archaeology, gender equality can be traced

Read More

The American Civil Rights Movement

The Black Lives Matter movement has been successful in bringing the injustice and discrimination faced by African Americans to the forefront of American politics and discussions. Critics, however, argue that the movement is violent and misguided, and some say that there is no need for such a movement today. While it is true that African Americans and people of different races, ethnic backgrounds and even sexual orientations enjoy more liberties and rights than ever before, there is still a lot of room for improvement. Also, it is important to acknowledge that the freedoms enjoyed today by non-white Americans can, largely,

Read More

Fannie Lou Hamer Sterilization

Fannie Lou Hamer was the 20th child of Lou Ella and James Lee Townsend, and was born in 1917. At the age of six, she joined her family in the cotton fields. While she managed to finish some years of schooling, she was picking hundreds of pounds of cotton a day by adolescence. She married Perry Hamer, known as Pap, in the early 1940s and served alongside him at W.D. Marlow’s plantation near Ruleville, Sunflower County. The skill of Hamer to read and write gave her the timekeeper post, a less physically challenging and more prestigious job in the sharecropping

Read More

Martin Luther King Jr. Summary

A CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER PROMINENT FIGURE IN BLACK HISTORY – DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. The African American Baptist Leader and activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the most visible voice and leader in the Civil Rights movement from 1955 until his death on April 4, 1968. King advanced human rights, based on the Christian values and non-violent advocacy of Mahatma Gandhi, through non-violence and civil disobedience. He was the son of Martin Luther King Sr, an early civil rights pioneer. EARLY LIFE King came from a middle class family, steeped in Southern Black ministry tradition.  Baptist preachers were

Read More

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a community of both Black and white people who gave protection and support to enslaved persons escaping the South. It evolved as a result of numerous separate clandestine actions coming together. Its precise date is unknown, although it functioned from the late 18th century until the Civil War, when its efforts to destroy the Confederacy grew less covert. Quakers Abolitionist The Quakers are often regarded as the first organized society to actively assist escaping enslaved persons. In 1786, George Washington protested that Quakers had tried to “liberate” one of his enslaved employees. Isaac T. Hopper, a

Read More

The Story of Marcus Garvey

Jamaican born “Marcus Garvey” was a Black activist and founder of the Pan-Africans movement which aimed to unite and interact with people of African origin around the world. He was a well-known civil rights leader who established the Black Star Line, a shipping enterprise, the Negro World Newspaper, and the UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association) a friendly organization of Black supremacists. They pushed for “separate – but – equal” rights for people of African heritage as an organization and aspired to build separate Black states around the world, most prominently in Liberia on Africa’s west coast. Marcus Garvey’s Early Life

Read More