Poisonous Prejudice

Prejudice has been around for as long as humans had a certain "opinion" about one another. Prejudice is the judging of people or ethnicity before getting to know it. It is very common even in today's society. Prejudice is born from because of the older generation of people teaching the newer generation how to think of a certain ethnicity or about how one behaves. Prejudice can be avoided, but the newer generation of kids are taught young to be prejudice, and the only way to avoid this prejudice is for the new generation of kids to see these people for who they are and not what their parents think of.

What's Civil Disobedience?

  Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government through nonviolent resistance. An example of civil disobedience in the civil rights movement was when African Americans refused to sit in the back of the bus, boycotted, and were beaten because they sat at the wrong table or drank out of the wrong drinking fountain. They did this through nonviolent protests and resistance. Civil disobedience was effective because African Americans were getting beaten for doing nothing and people were reading this in the news and this started the civil rights movement. An example of this was the open casket funeral of Emmit Till.

 

Civil Rights and Music

People have different ways to express themselves and one very common way is throught music. African Americans sung a song called "We Shall Overcome", and it was a song that represented to them that it will get better one day. The song eventually became the anthem of civil rights movements and the song is sung around the world. Music is a way that people express themselves, the people had problems and music helped them get over it. Still today people say "Music is the best therapy."Music helped men and woman stand up and fight, it gave them confidence boosts and helped th:em succeed. Most of these songs for civil rights were adapted from old tunes but they mean the same; the songs all represent a better future.



http://folkmusic.about.com/od/toptens/tp/CivilRightsSong.htm

Misconceptions

Most people think that the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's was only African Americans trying to sit in front of the bus with white people, but there is more to that then what people really know. The Civil Rights movement also included Latinos and Asian-Americans in the U.S. during that time because of similar reasons that the African Americans wanted equal rights. So to say, all non-white ethnicities were refused certain rights that all of them had under the constitution. Many of the Latinos and Asian-Americans who were  natural born citizens were criticized by many people because they thought that they were illegal and they were not better than dirt. All three ethnicities who were oppressed by the whites fought for the rights they knew they had under the constitution, they wanted to be able to have the same opportunities, privileges, and treatment that the white people had during the time. Even in today's society some misconception regarding the Civil Rights for same sex marriage is that if that were allowed then it would affect our lives, but really it won't. If there were same sex marriages nothing will happen, the world will not blow up or anything.

The Story of Emmett Till

The Story of Emmett Till


Emmett Till was mercilessly beat to death on August 27th, 1955 in the town of Summer, Mississippi. He suffered countless blows to the face with a pistol, got one of his eyes gouged out, and a gunshot pointblank in the head. What could lead to such an incident? Would you believe the reason was simply because he whistled at a white woman?
He was reportedly flirting with 21 year old white woman Carolyn Bryant. A couple nights later, Carolyn's husband, Roy, and his half brother, J.W. Milam arrived at Emmett's great uncle's house where they kidnapped him and took him to the Tallahatchi River where this horrific beating took place. To his death, Till still believed that he was equal to Bryant. Roy asked Emmett if he still felt like he was equal, to which Till said he was. Bryant shot him point blank in the head right there.
After some boys fishing discovered the body, the authorities wanted to bury him there in Mississippi with a closed casket. However, Emmett's mother wanted to bring him to Illinois and insisted on an open casket so everyone can view the horrors of racial inequality. It wasn't until after Emmett's mother threatened to open the casket with her own hands did the funeral director give in to opening it. Tens of thousands of people viewed the unforgetful corpse of Emmett Till.

Racism in sports

In sports there is much room for racism, sports that were segregated become integrated and people don't change with the time. Many sports have racism if you recall Luis Suarez problems with Patrice Evra in which he was found guilty and banned for eight matches with a 40,000 euro fine.  According to research conducted by UPENN, there is also racism in Basketball. Studies showed that in 13 seasons from the 1991 season to the 2004 season, white referees called out a greater amount of fouls against black players then white players. The same was seen in black officials against white players. It is sad to see people who are same in ablility but handicapped by the referee because of his personal dislike of the ethnicity.Racism has been a problem throughout history but there is improvement, people are working together. In sports we see improvement from the first baseball player in the white MLB to what we have today a mixture of races competing to be the best.

Segragated Prom

Today FORTY FIVE YEARS after the civil rights movement there are still segragated proms. In Wilcox County High School, Ga, a group of highschool students are fighting for integrated proms. Some female students have been best friends there whole lives and they could not share one of their most amazing nights together. Its amazing to see that in the south this segragation has lasted this long. The students have tried to change this, but since this is privatly funded, the school has no say in the matter. Parents and students plan the prom so it shows that problems between ethnicities exist since it has not been integrated after forty five years. In a interview Stephanie Sinnot told WSAV that "We are all friends...That's just kind of not right that we can't go to prom together." These kids have spent their childhood and youth together, they should be abled to end it together.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/segregated-prom-wilcox-county-ga-high-school_n_3013733.html