The city of Cumming is a small but growing city located north of Atlanta in the state of Georgia. The services in the city and the beauty of the area have made the city, and the county it resides in, a popular place to move lately. The town isn’t very famous rarely making national news or television other than Oprah’s visit to the city in 1987 challenging racism in the southern states. Since I was born the city’s population has almost doubled. The population of the unincorporated areas of Cumming has reached over eighty-five thousand according to the 2010 census (2010 United States Census)
The city of Cumming was founded in 1833. In discussion with my mother she told me “In 1972 I moved to Cumming. And when your father and I married we moved
Parkers article first appeared in Town Hall magazine. Her perspective as an African American woman who wor...
The loss of public housing and the expanse of the wealth gap throughout the state of Rhode Island has been a rising issue between the critics and supporters of gentrification, in both urban areas such as Providence and wealthy areas such as the island of Newport, among other examples. With the cities under a monopoly headed by the wealth of each neighborhood, one is left to wonder how such a system is fair to all groups. Relatively speaking, it isn’t, and the only ones who benefit from such a system are white-skinned. With the deterioration of the economic status of Rhode Island, and especially in the city of Providence, more and more educated Caucasians are leaving to seek a more fertile economic environment.
More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)
Firestone, David (April 8, 2002). "Overcoming a Taboo, Buses Will Now Serve Suburban Atlanta". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2008.
The segregation in South Carolina happens everywhere and every day. Indeed, racism is manifested through the media, the law, which legitimizes segregation, and the perceptions that white and black people have of each other. Because of the laws against colored people, Rosaleen, as a black woman, lives with constraints in her life. For example, she cannot live in a house with white people (Kidd, p.8), she cannot represent Lily at the charm school (Kidd, p.19), or even to travel with a car with white people (Kidd, p.76). The media is also influenced by racism, and constantly shows news about segregation such as the case of Martin Luther King, who is arrested because he wan...
As the United States developed and grew, upward mobility was central to the American dream. It was the unstated promise that no matter where you started, you had the chance to grow and proceed beyond your initial starting point. In the years following the Civil War, the promise began to fade. People of all races strived to gain the representation, acknowledgement and place in this society. To their great devastation, this hope quickly dwindled. Social rules were set out by the white folk, and nobody could rise above their social standing unless they were seen fit to be part of the white race. The social group to be impacted the most by this “social rule” was the African Americans. Black folk and those who were sympathetic to the idea of equal rights to blacks were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. (Burton, 1998) The turning point in North Carolina politics was the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898. It was a very bold and outrageous statement from the white supremacists to the black folk. The Democratic white supremacists illegally seized power from the local government and destroyed the neighborhood by driving out the African Americans and turning it from a black-majority to a white-majority city. (Class Discussion 10/3/13) This event developed the idea that even though an African American could climb a ladder to becoming somebody in his or her city, he or she will never become completely autonomous in this nation. Charles W. Chesnutt discusses the issue of social mobility in his novel The Marrow of Tradition. Olivia Carteret, the wife of a white supremacist is also a half-sister to a Creole woman, Janet Miller. As the plot develops, we are able to see how the social standing of each woman impacts her everyday life, and how each woman is ...
Anne Moody, writes an inspiring and heart touching autobiography of growing in rural area of Mississippi, as a poor black woman. Coming of Age in Mississippi, is not only about the life of Moody, but how Jim Crow laws affected colored folks and the struggle for civil rights. This book is especially eye opening because it shows the variation of Moody's thoughts with her age. Not only is it an autobiography but in some aspects a history book.
The author, Rebecca Burns begins by creating the city in broad strokes, sketching the build up to and the fallout from the riot that began on the evening of Sep. 22, 1906 and drawing brief connections to major figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington to name a couple. Then she begins describing reported assaults on white women by black men during the summer of 1906 and the repeated lynching that ensued. Each assault, be it imagined, perceived or real, added to the growing temperamental heat in Atlanta thanks to rampant yellow journalism and an exploitative gubernatorial political contest. The journalists prayed on the few real accounts and reports then completely fabricate an unproportioned and unrealistic version of these attacks.
In April of 1963 the Southern Christian Leaders Conference (SCLC) organized a campaign against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. African Americans in Birmingham in part with the SCLC arrang...
With society continuing to put cities such as Beverly Hills on a pedestal that avoids recognition of neighboring populations, a false “American Dream” is created with individuals believing that diverse areas such as Los Angeles merely entail the expensive cars, luxurious homes, and gated communities that are owned primarily by white populations. Whether it is presented through television, movies, music, or newspapers, the consistent societal opinion is that Los Angeles is full of wealth and prosperity when in reality there is a huge wealth gap among the rich and poor. By constantly bombarding the public with views of scenic and lively places such as Beverly Hills, an unrealistic image is promoted that g...
The movie City of God, showed the incredible world of gang youth in the undeveloped area of Rio de Janeiro, where gangs ruled the streets and young children were initiated into murder before they were teenagers. The urbanization of the third world is creating sub-cultures that are filed with chaos and run by crime, most of which is the result of drugs and other illegal activities. In his article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley, 1). Though the Civil Rights movement was able to get equal rights for blacks, it could not stop the brutality that still plagued them. The urban setting is so overcrowded that the people are living on top of each other.
As written in Literature and it's Times, a distinct place where racism and prejudice took place was the South. In the early 1900's, the South remained mostly rural and agricultural in economy. Poverty was everywhere, and sharecropping had replaced slavery as the main source of black labor. Blacks who remained in the South received the burdens of poverty and discrimination. The women faced sexual and racial oppression, making th...
Racism and prejudice has been present in almost every civilization and society throughout history. Even though the world has progressed greatly in the last couple of decades, both socially and technologically, racism, hatred and prejudice still exists today, deeply embedded in old-fashioned, narrow-minded traditions and values.
For decades, African Americans have been on a racial discrimination and extremely deadly roller coaster ride for justice and equality. In this new day and age, racial tendencies and prejudice has improved since the 1700-1800s,however, they are slowly going back to certain old ways with voting laws and restaurants having the option to serve blacks or not. It all began with the start of slavery around 1619. The start of the New World, the settlers needed resources England and other countries had, which started the Triangle Trade. The New England settlers manufactured and shipped rum to West Africa; West Africa traded slaves to the West Indies for molasses and money . From the very beginning, they treated African Americans like an object or animals instead of another human being with feelings and emotions. Women that were pregnant gave birth to children already classified as slaves. After the American Revolution, people in the north started to realize the oppression and treatment of blacks to how the British was treating them. In 1787, the Northwest Territory made slavery illegal and the US Constitution states that congress could no longer ban the trade of slaves until 1808 (Brunner). However, since the invention of the cotton gin, the increase for labor on the field increased the demand for slave workers. Soon the South went thru an economic crisis with the soil, tobacco, and cash crops with dropped the prices of slaves and increased slave labor even more. To ensure that the slaves do not start a rebellion, congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1793 that made it a federal crime to assist a slave in escaping (Black History Milestones). This is the first of many Acts that is applied to only African-Americans and the start of many ...
Purtill, Maureen. 2009. A Call for Critical Race Studies in Urban Planning. Critical Planning. 16: 218-222