Fighting for Civil Rights in America

Imagine walking into a Woolworth’s store on a sunny afternoon only to be greeted by twenty pairs of white people’s eyes all directed towards the door. Imagine sitting down with two other blacks and demanding service. Next, imagine service being denied, and seeing a woman dragged by her hair across the floor, other blacks beaten in front of everyone, and no one making a move to help. This is a common scene at many sit-ins across the country today. The reason for these sit-ins is people fighting for civil rights. Civil Rights is the nonpolitical rights of a citizen. Blacks are becoming the subjects of violence, their self-esteem is lowered, making them feel inferior and most importantly they are denied their freedom of choice. Many actions have been taken to try and resolve the problem, that blacks are being denied their civil rights.

First, one part of the problem is that blacks are becoming the subjects of violence. More specifically physical violence, which is when someone uses physical force to harm another person. Some ways harm is inflicted onto its victims are by beatings, many times in public, people being burned to death as a result of their house being set on fire and lynching, in which a person is hung. One specific example of physical violence is a scene at Woolworth’s where Anne Moody and two other blacks, a male and a female, sat down at the reserved white counter and demanded service. After many taunts and threats, an open display of hatred was inflicted upon them. They had food dumped upon them and were pulled off the stools. At one point Anne was dragged by her hair, off the stool and across the floor. A few other men and women, including whites, soon sat with the blacks at the counter. The men were punched with brass knuckles and kicked repeatedly. Another example of the use of physical violence is in the story The Invisible Man. In this story, a few black men were mislead into thinking they were to read speeches in front of a group of people. When they arrived there, there were nothing but white men with liquor and a dancing white woman. The black men were forced to put on blind folds then were forced to fight each other. It became a despicable scene and many of the men were bloody and knocked out.