Civil Rights Blog

Some lessons learned throughout the course of the Civil Rights Movement have really effected my view of things I see wrong with society. One of the most important lessons I have learned is the importance of speaking up and pointing out the flaws in society. No matter how complicated the issue might be, if you don’t take initiative and get actively involved then that problem will always be there when you may have been able to make a change, even if it was a small one. A perfect example of taking initiative and making a change is Martin Luther King Jr. He strongly believed that our founding fathers ensured everyone is America equal access to rights, and sure enough that is what they promised us, it’s one major reason of why we have so many people all over the world coming to America. When MLK saw and actually experienced rights being taken he knew he had to do something about it, so he actively got involved and influenced others to join the movement. He had a dream, and made sure everyone knew about his dream, and his dream is what drove him to keep fighting and doing what he knew was right. He got involved with protests and made speeches and for that he has become an icon; it is people like him that we need to actively get involved to help make a change.

When it comes to equity and equality there are so many ways that America continues to struggle with. First there is institutional racism, that was somehow was engrained in the system as America developed and now we don’t realize that it is an issue but it really is. For example, when a person of African American descent kills someone it turns into this huge deal and he gets put in jail for life. Where as on the other hand a white person kills someone he gets put into jail for a certain amount of years, throughout the jail systems there are a way larger amount of African Americans than whites. Second we have the way that big business people make a large amount of money and that amount just keeps on adding up. Then you have the smaller business people who make a decent amount of money, and that amount stays the same no matter how hard they work. This shows that you have to find your own methods of working your way up to even try and become that big business man making lots of money, and you can try for as long as you want but you aren’t very likely to reach the top. Without reaching equity, which is a long ways away, we can never reach equality as a society.

The events and ideas of the Civil Rights Movement connect to the present because all the Occupy Movements going on are ways of people speaking out and becoming actively involved in changing the issue. These Occupy protestors are trying to peacefully protest, but the brutality from police makes it difficult for people to keep everything peaceful. That idea of police brutality relates to the Civil Rights Movement because back then people peacefully protesting were beaten, arrested, and just treated like dirt for becoming involved. There are also people such as anarchists who have gotten involved in both these movements. They have really affected the way the media portrays these events and they make things seem so much worse then they really are. Anarchists back then were like the KKK for example who hated the fact that people were speaking out so they killed people. The anarchists today aren’t going so far as killing people but they have caused riots and vandalized the cities these protests take place in. People should be able to feel free to fight for what they believe in and it should be able to be peaceful, the way people wanted to originally go about it. The Civil Rights Movement really made a drastic change in America, and now we have to wait and see what kind of change these Occupy Movements bring. Hopefully they bring change for better, like the Civil Rights Movement, and not a change in the wrong direction.