Lynching in the United States

Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at more than five times the rate of whites, and at least ten times the rate in five states.” (Nellis, 2016) Although there have been promising reforms put in place to reduce the prison populations, racial and ethnic disparities within the prison system continue to cripple the idea of justice in America. African Americans have been incarcerated in state prisons 5.1 times the rate for whites. In the states of Iowa, Minnesota, New…

reasoning, many atrocities and wrongdoings committed by people of the United States were justified through lens of victims; Patricia Limerick, a historian and author, labels this outlook as the “Empire of Innocence” in her chapter of the same title. She goes on in her book, proposing that “Innocence of intention placed the course of events in a bright and positive light”, an idea that can be found in the relations between United States’ citizens and Native Americans and freedmen following the…

Crow Laws, Klu Klux Klan, the Plessy v. Ferguson, and Lynching Mobs in America. The Jim Crow Laws were local and state laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern States in the United States. Segregation was based on skin color, and based on the idea that “blacks were inferior and subordinate class of beings”(Pilgrim.) The Jim Crow laws were very strict and did not give freedom to…

sparked racial violence throughout the United States. Introduction In the last lesson, you learned of the origins of the Jim Crow Laws. In this Read It, you are going to learn just how far some people were willing to go in order to carry out their beliefs on the Jim Crow Laws. As Reconstruction began to end, many states were left with the ability to begin rewriting their own constitutions. Many southern states wanted to include Jim Crow principles into their state constitutions. Within this…

Lynching, which began in the United States around 1880, was one of the most profound ways of demonstrating racial violence towards blacks in the South. Lynching continued in the United States until it began to settle down in the mid 1900s. This historical act of violence left an impactful strain on the relationship between black and whites for years forward. In the novel, 100 Years of Lynchings, author Ralph Ginzburg compiles primary source articles from 1880-1961 to demonstrate how ideas and…

consequent segregation. The Jim Crow Laws, passed in 1877, made it legal for segregation in the United States. Propaganda, mainly in the form of literature and media, convinced whites that they were racially superior to everyone else, causing them to look down upon other races, which resulted in the now legalized segregation. Segregation eventually grew to become discrimination, peaking at lynchings, being hosed down with water by police, and worse. “In the end, we will remember not the…

No Hispanic group has contributed more to the nation’s [US] prosperity than Mexicans, yet none makes white America more uneasy about the future (Gonzalez, 2011, p. 96). Mexico is at the core of our country’s Latin heritage and every 2 in 3 Latinos in America are Mexican. But, how did Mexicans get to the discrimination that they are suffering today? In this paper, I will show the violence Mexicans endured following the U.S.-Mexico War, and the many Mexicans groups who were fighting back against…

crashed, the economy was weak. Then, when the stock market crashed in October of 1929, everything fell apart. The economy continued to fall and did not plateau until three years later, but the people were still suffering. The depression began in the United States, but because of the weak Federal Reserve, it eventually spread to parts of the outside world. The Federal Reserve is linked to other banking systems outside of the US, and because the Federal Reserve was weak, it caused linked economic…

Roxane Gay, a well-known author, wrote an article for the New York Times discussing the unfortunate terrorist shooting in Charleston, South Carolina that resulted in nine deaths. To begin her article, Gay bluntly states that she does not forgive Dylann Roof—the shooter—for his ill-conceived actions. She continues into detail why she believes Roof does not deserve to be forgiven. She uses fair amounts of pathos in her statements, making references to her childhood and her Catholic faith. She…

We have seen this before: the wanton killing of Black people by police. The historical record is replete over four centuries and well into the early 21st century. Black lives do not matter in the United States of America because they do not. They have never mattered. The current economic obsolescence of Black people has been in the making over the last 40 years with the dislocation and shifts in the industrial base of the U.S. economy. The Information and Technological Age, while benefiting from…