Analysis Of Martin Luther King Jr. And The Civil Rights Movement

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It’s 2015 and we live in a world that still sees man and judges’ man by the color of his skin. Now let’s step back in time fifty something years ago. The lines have been drawn whites on one side and African Americans on the other. Where would you be standing, would it be on the forefront of the battle lines fighting for equality or shouting from the rooftops racial slurs and spreading hate? Through the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given to by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”(King, 2). Martin Luther King Jr. was an African American and is one of the many faces of the civil rights movement in the 60s. He was at the forefront of the movement on up until …show more content…

It would be easy to say that we live in a world where people are given the same opportunities and are able to overcome the obstacles placed in front of us, but that’s not the case. In an article by Max Krochmal it says, “At the core of all of it was the belief that human rights included not only the desegregation of public space, but also the right to improve one’s economic condition.”(Krochmal). However, that’s not the case, the South in 2010 contained the highest arrest rate in the nation and just under half, 47%, of these arrests were black (Tsia). The arrests varied from major crimes, like murder or drug smuggling, to minor ones like public intoxication or driving without a driver’s license. Compared to the number of white arrest, black men were 6 times more likely to be arrested (Tsia). The south containing 19 of the 39 million blacks, or 48%, of the nation’s blacks, is also responsible for many police brutality and shootings that have been taken to a grand jury and made national news coverage (FBI). The most recent one in the news today was in Ferguson, Missouri. The incident was that a black male was shot and killed for allegedly attacking a cop in his patrol car. Although the jury ruled the cop not guilty, many blacks around the country felt as if the cop shot and killed the young man unjustly. This incident caused outraged protesters to fill the street demanding equal rights and claiming that the cops are targeting the black community for

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