Since today is MLK day I wanted to share a paper I wrote about the issues of MLK's day.
Racial
Segregation from the What to the Whom
What is Racial Segregation?
Racial segregation
is the cruel and unfair treatment of people who look different from the
culturally accepted norm. Segregation
has been around for hundreds of years and has withstood the test of time from
the post antebellum South to Adolph Hitler’s view of a “perfect” Germany. Segregation is a monster that seeks to divide
the United States and unravel the finely woven nation that our Forefathers
made. When people think of segregation, they most likely don’t imagine an
actual creature with a humanoid form. So here is my view of what segregation
looks like: I think of segregation resembling a Titan from Greek mythology. First, its feet are made up of coal black
hearts full of cruelty. Its legs are composed
of trees full of hangman’s nooses. Its
torso is full of writhing snakes whose fangs drip the blood of innocent people
murdered by segregation. The arms and
hands of the segregation monster are made up of the bones and lives of the
innocents and segregationists alike. The
monster’s neck is made up of iron and its head the dirt from the graves of its
murdered victims. Finally, the giant’s hair is made up of whips and the white
robes of Ku Klux Klan members.
White Supremacy
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”
Genesis 1:26
One of
the underlying currents in the river of racial segregation is supremacy –
specifically, white supremacy. To some
people, white skin is absolutely supreme. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or
poor. This is far from true. There are so many similarities between people
of all races. Whites as well as blacks
can do drugs, be in gangs, dress like tramps, abort, and murder. These things aren’t defined by skin color. But
neither are laughter, marriage, children, hopes, dreams, and education. Why should a white man and a black man who
have the same number of kids, a wife, and a dog be forced to sit on opposite
ends of a bus? Or use different drinking fountains? Or send their children to
different schools? The United States constitution says “all men are created equal.” Why then are whites dubbed “supreme?” The writers of our constitution would be
turning over in their graves if they could have seen the chaos in the 1900’s.
America and Racial Segregation
“When the architects of our great
republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was
to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as
white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. I have a dream
that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Human
beings are made in the image of God, yet all have sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God. So maybe that’s why
people are racist. If people would
remember that all blood runs red, maybe they would be kinder. Racial cruelty has been a prominent issue in
America since the first explorer touched American soil. It started with the Native Americans whose
land we stole, and moved to the Africans used by the colonists as slaves. They figured that since they were white, they
naturally had a right to whatever they laid eyes on. God said, “You shall not steal, you shall not
covet.” The early explorers broke both
of these commandments with the land and slaves. Both things were assumed to be fine due to the
fact that they were obviously the mother race and much better than the red-skinned
Indians and brown-skinned Africans.
Schools and integration
Black-only colleges and schools were
almost always poor quality with little funding and many students. The white schools received the necessary funding
to give their students good educations.
The all-black schools were given very little funding to pay their
teachers and buy supplies. The schools
needed to be integrated, so a group from Little Rock decided they would make
the change.
The Little Rock Nine
On the first day of school, September
4, 1957, a courageous group of nine black high school students were going to be
the first to be integrated into a white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The nine students were very ambitious. Their future career plans ranged from an
attorney to an atomic scientist. The
nine, along with their parents, hoped for a fairly peaceful transition.
On
the first day, the school was surrounded by guards who were there to let the
white students in and keep the blacks students out. The school was also surrounded by furious
crowds who were yelling for blood (not literally, but they were really mad). The students approached the school thinking
the guards were there to protect them. The
guards blocked the student’s entrance letting the crowd yell horrible insults
and obscenities. After a few minutes,
the students’ parents hurried the students to their various homes. After many days of this, the students were
finally allowed into the school for part of a day. But the people of Little Rock were still angry
about the fact that the school board was trying to integrate the school. Finally, after many months of court cases and
cruelty, the Little Rock Nine were allowed to go to school full time with the
white students.
Inferior Quality Medical Care and Bad Jobs
In the movie The Help, one of the maids tells a story about the death of her son
which was due to inadequate medical care. In her words:
One
night he was working late at the Scanlon-Taylor Mill, lugging two-by-fours,
splinters slicing all the way through the glove. He too small for that kind of
work, too skinny, but he needed that job. He was tired. It was raining. He slip
off the loading dock, fell down on the drive. Tractor trailer didn't see him
and crushed his lungs fore he could move. By the time I found out, he was dead.[1]
Many
of the more desirable jobs were “white
only” leaving the many less desirable jobs such as maintenance work,
housekeeping, and raising children to blacks. In the movie The Help, there is a story told by an elderly black maid who had
worked in many white homes. She talks
about raising her employer’s children like her own because the parents are much
too busy to bother with their children. One
scene in the movie shows a little girl being yelled at and spanked in public for
trying to please her mother. The maid
hugs the little girl and tells her, “You
is kind. You is smart. You is important.” (The Help). The maids in the south were often
subjected to long hours, little pay, and less than desirable bosses.
Bus Transportation
Many blacks had nasty run-ins with bus
drivers who were usually very strict with the bus segregation laws. These drivers were often very cruel to the
blacks who made up the majority of the bus riders. Blacks who sat in the wrong spots or refused
to move when the bus drivers told them to were often subjected to cruel
treatment at the hands of the bus drivers and even the police. Cruel drivers often made the blacks get in
through the back of the bus. Some drivers would even take the bus fair and
drive off while the people were getting in. Finally, a courageous woman from Birmingham,
Alabama had enough.
Rosa Parks
December 1, 1955 was
like a shot heard round the world. The
events of that cold December day would trigger a domino effect that would
change the bus laws in the South. Rosa
Parks was tired, cold, and hungry after a long day at work tailoring clothing
for white people. She was hurrying home
to her husband and her warm house. When
she boarded a nearly empty segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, she followed
all of the rules and sat were she was supposed to. After a while, the bus started filling and
the bus driver wanted her to give up her seat to a white man. She was naturally angry. She had paid her fair just like everyone
else, and was also there first. Why
should she give up her seat? At her
refusal to give up her seat, the furious bus driver called the police who then
arrested Rosa. After being taken to the
police station, Rosa Parks was photographed, fingerprinted and finally allowed
to call her mother to send her husband “Parks” to pay her bail. Did Rosa Parks deserve this cruelty? She was a hard- working American citizen, just
like the white man, the bus driver, and everyone else on the bus. These events triggered the start of the
Montgomery bus boycott that lasted over six months.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Before the boycott officially started,
two young black girls were arrested for refusing to give up their seats on
various busses. The girls were treated
cruelly by the bus drivers and the police. A man named E. D. Nixon wanted a court case
that would draw enough publicity to get the segregated bus laws to change. Nixon decided that the two girls weren’t
mature enough to handle what he wanted to do so he contacted Rosa Parks after
her case went public. To draw attention
to the cause, Nixon decided they needed to boycott the bus lines on the day of
the case.
On December 5, 1955 the blacks of
Montgomery, Alabama walked and carpooled to their various jobs around the city.
This went on for over six months, amid
much resistance from the bus lines. Finally, after much walking, the citizens of
Montgomery got what they wanted. The bus
lines were finally completely integrated.
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was a white supremacy
group in the South that started mainly during the American Civil War. The KKK was a group of white men both rich and
poor who wanted to keep the South the way it always had been. The members of the KKK were behind many brutal
killings and horrible things done to black men and women who dared to speak
out. The Klan was a very secretive group
that forced its members to wear long white robes and pointy hoods to hide their
faces. The KKK members performed many
wicked deeds, yet were rarely tried and convicted. The
historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:
Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-black
vigilante groups,
disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands,
displaced Democratic politicians, illegal
whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers,
sadists, rapists, white
workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor
discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and
white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of
their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white,
southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called,
Klansmen.
Some of the cruel things done by Klansmen include: lynching (illegal
hanging without trial), burning crosses (not with people on them), rape, brutal
beatings, smashing/ destroying personal property, etc. All of these horrible things done by the Klan
are perfect examples of American racial segregation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, segregation is wrong; it is a
cruel practice that should never have started. Many lives were shattered due to the effects
of segregation. Martin Luther King, Jr.
had a dream that all men black and white would be seen as equals in all
respects. It was the dream of all men
who fought for freedom, whether it be religious or racial. From the brave men who fought in the
revolutionary war to the men who fought the battle for integration, a high
price was paid. I want to conclude with
this excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech:
I
have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its
governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and
nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black
girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as
sisters and brothers.
I
have a dream today.
And when this
happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and
every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that
day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are
free at last." – Martin Luther King, Jr
