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Frederick Douglass

2012-09-02T15:14:05Z

Diffy1:

[[image:Freddouglas.jpg|150px|thumb|Frederick Douglass]]
The negro '''Frederick Douglass''' (1818-1895), born as Frederick Baily, was raised as a [[slave]]. He escaped to [[Massachusetts]] at age 20 and changed his name to Frederick Douglass in order to conceal himself from slave catchers.

He developed marvelous [[debate|debating]] and [[oration|oratory]] skills to expose the injustices of slavery. [[William Lloyd Garrison]], publisher of the [[abolition|abolitionist]] Liberator Newspaper, hired him.

Douglass published a best-selling [[autobiography]], but then felt he had to flee to [[England]] to avoid being caught by slave catchers. Reformer Daniel O'Connell formed a friendship with him there.

Upon his return to New York, he founded the "North Star" newspaper.

His motto was "Right is of no sex - Truth is of no color - God is the Father of us all, and we are all Brethren."

Douglass wrote, "I loved all mankind, slaveholder not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light ... I gathered scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street gutters, and washed and dried them, that ... I might get a word or two of wisdom from them."

{{DEFAULTSORT:Douglass, Frederick}}

==see also==
* [[Abolitionism]]

==References==

<References/>

[[Category:Abolitionists]]
[[Category:Slavery]]

African Americans

2012-09-02T15:13:43Z

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[[image:Freddouglas.jpg|225px|thumb|[[Frederick Douglass]], historic [[Abolitionism|abolitionist]] activist, historic member of the [[Republican Party]] of the United States.]]

'''African American''' is a [[politically correct]] term (even though the term "politically correct" is usually used only in authoritarian countries, and we ''staunchly'' oppose them for their evil atheism) some use to describe the ethnic background of Americans with [[Africa]]n ancestry. The great majority of African Americans are descended from Africans brought to North America as [[slavery|slaves]] beginning four centuries ago. Others (like [[Colin Powell]]) were twentieth century immigrants from the [[West Indies]] or Africa. Many American [[conservative]]s believe that the use of terms such as "African-American" or "Mexican-American," collectively referred to as "[[hyphenated American|hyphenated Americanism]]," make the mistake of "putting America second" and emphasize racial differences over common national identity <ref>http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/on_becoming_an_unhyphenated_am.html</ref>

==Terms==
The preferred terminology changes constantly. Currently "black" and "African American" are in favor, and "Afro-American" and "Negro" are out of favor. The situation before 1960 was just the reverse. "Colored" was popular until the 1950s, but now is generally out of favor except among some [[leftist]] groups.

==History==
see [[Black history]]

Blacks were originally brought to America to serve as slaves in southeastern states on large-scale plantations. During the [[Civil War]], all slaves were freed by [[Abraham Lincoln]] though the [[Emancipation Proclamation]], the [[Thirteenth Amendment]], and some state actions. During [[Reconstruction]] the Freedmen (freed slaves) gained citizenship and civil and political rights, including the right to marry, move about, and keep their wages.

The system of [[Sharecropper|sharecropping]] instituted after the end of the war left most Freedmen poor, while the [[Jim Crow]] policies of racial [[segregation]] that were implemented after the end of [[Reconstruction]] limited their civic and political rights.

Blacks left the rural south in two waves, the first around 1915-20, the second coming after [[World War II]] when machinery ended the need for large numbers of people to pick cotton by hand. The migrants headed to the large cities of the North and West, and also in the South, moving from very poorly paid farm work to wage labor.

==Politics==
Blacks tended to support the [[Republican Party]] from the 1860s to the 1960s, but few who lived in the South voted. The [[New Deal]] provided large-scale relief for blacks during the [[Great Depression]]. Some black Republican organizations, as in Chicago, switched overnight to the [[Democrat]]s. This sudden change is often attributed to the leftist sentiments that were growing in the late twentieth century. The [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965 allowed blacks to vote in the South, and has been vigorously enforced. Since 1964 blacks have voted 85% to 95% for Democratic presidential candidates, with an occasional black Republican elected to state office.

==Religion==
[[Image:President Barack Obama.jpg|thumb|150px|Barack Obama, the first President with black ancestry]]

Among African-Americans, religiosity is very high, and the standard practice since [[Reconstruction]] is for black ministers to be community spokespersons, and political power brokers; they often run for office. The great majority of African Americans are [[Protestant]]s, with their own [[Baptist]], [[Pentecostal]], and [[Methodist]] churches. A few are [[Muslim]]s.<ref>The Pluralism Project at Harvard University[http://www.pluralism.org/resources/statistics/tradition.php#Islam] Twenty-four percent of American Muslims are black, according to American Muslim Council's Zogby poll of August 2000.</ref>

==References==
<references/>
* [http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI)]

==See also==
* [[Black History]]
* [[Civil Rights]]
* [[Jim Crow]]
* [[Race]]
* [[Black Republican]]

[[category:Ethnicities]]
[[category:The South]]
[[category:Civil Rights]]
[[category:Black History]]

Negro

2012-09-02T15:12:21Z

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#REDIRECT [[Black people]]

Martin Luther King

2012-09-02T15:12:03Z

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[[Image:MLKing..gif|right]]

Reverend '''Martin Luther King, Jr'''., Ph.D. (1929-1968) was by far the most important [[negro]] leader of the 1960s. Since his assassination in 1968, he has been the single most important exemplar of civil rights in America. King was the son of a Baptist minister and became a Baptist minister himself. King's life was filled with [[Jesus]] from his birth to his death. Everything he did to promote justice was never out of step with [[Christian]] beliefs.

==Education and early career==

King was educated at Boston University, where he earned his advanced degree in theology. His PhD dissertation, however, was largely plagiarized; historians believe the supervising committee did not realize that. King became the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

==Theology==

Rathbun (1968) shows the theological basis for King as a social reformer derived from four sources: the [[Social Gospel]] of [[Walter Rauschenbusch]], the Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy of [[Reinhold Niebuhr]] and Paul Tillich, Personalism taught at Boston University, and [[Mohandas Gandhi|Gandhi's]] concept of nonviolent love. King's synthesis of these four sources supported his civil rights activities. Laws may be broken, said King, if they are unjust laws which do not conform to eternal, natural law. Jesus, said King, was a true revolutionary who brought peace as a "presence of justice" instead of an "absence of tension." The church also must be revolutionary to counteract evil and bring about social justice. King's theology of social action foresaw complete, unprejudiced equality based on natural rights and privileges.<ref> John W. Rathbun, "Martin Luther King: The Theology of Social Action." ''American Quarterly'' 1968 20(1): 38-53. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2710989 in JSTOR]</ref>

==Civil rights==
[[File:Montgomery Story Comic 1956.jpg|thumb|The Montgomery Story, Comic cover, 1956.]]
He became an advocate against [[racial discrimination]].

On Dec. 31, 1955, he led the nonviolent [[boycott]] of city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, after he sent [[Rosa Parks]] to be arrested for not moving to the back of the bus.<ref>http://www.thekingcenter.org/mlk/chronology.html</ref>

Rev. King wrote his most famous writing, “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” (1963), while imprisoned for demonstrating against segregated eating facilities.

{{cquote|'''''Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'''''}}

==Foreign policy==
[[Image:MartLK.jpg|right|thumb|Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: "I Have a Dream" (1963)]]
By 1966 his attacks on the [[Vietnam War]] led to a break with [[Lyndon Johnson]] and the labor unions that had been his base of support in the white community (along with the liberal churches).

King founded the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]].

Rev. King's most famous speech, delivered to a huge crowd gathered in Washington, D.C. in 1964, chanted the refrain "[[I Have a Dream]]" of an end to [[segregation]] and [[discrimination]]. It was a brilliant Christian sermon that drew upon verses and images in the [[Bible]],<ref>For example, the speech recited [[Book of Isaiah|Isaiah]] 40:4-5.</ref> ending in "Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"<ref>http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm</ref>
The same year Rev. King was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. Rev. King was assassinated by [[James Earl Ray]] on April 4, 1968 in [[Memphis]], Tennessee.

On April 16, 1963, Rev. King wrote:

:"As the [[Apostle Paul]] carried the gospel of [[Jesus Christ]] ... so am I compelled to carry the gospel... I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers ...

:I stand in the middle of two opposing forces ... One is a force of complacency ... The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups ... the largest being [[Elijah Muhammad]]'s [[Nation of Islam|Muslim]] movement.

:Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America ...

:I have tried to stand between these two forces ... for there is the more excellent way of love ...

:One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our [[Judeo-Christian]] heritage."

In his 1964 book, WHY WE CAN'T WAIT, Rev. King wrote:

:"Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the [[Negro]] is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."

His last major public speech became known as "I've Been to the Mountaintop" <ref>http://www.afscme.org/about/1549.cfm</ref>

== Nobel Peace Prize laureate ==
[[File:Martin Luther King Jr nobel peace prize.jpg|right|200px]]
On December 10, 1964, in Oslo, Norway, Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. His acceptance speech started saying:

<blockquote>
I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when twenty-two million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award in behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice... I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. [http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/nobelpeaceprize.htm]
</blockquote>

{{Clear}}

==Political affiliation==
Time and time again, liberals claim that MLK was a Democrat. Liberals point to the people he associated with or that he opposed [[Barry Goldwater]] as proof that MLK was a Democrat. There is considerable evidence that he was not a Democrat. Martin Luther King Sr. was a [[Republican]], that would almost certainly make his son a Republican. Only after his son was arrested did King Sr. plead to President Kennedy for his safe release. It is noted at that point MLK Sr. switched parties to support Kennedy. This despite Kennedy voting against the 1957 Civil Rights Act and was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. In addition, [[Robert Kennedy]] had the [[FBI]] wiretap MLK Jr's phone in order to undermine King. <ref>[http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500 Why Martin Luther King Was Republican, Human Events, August 16, 2006]</ref> It was the Republicans that freed the slaves nearly one-hundred years earlier, that fact was not lost on his generation. Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association said, [he] "absolutely was a Republican," and "We were all Republicans in those days. The Democrats were training fire hoses on us, siccing dogs on us." <ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP, Washington Post, October 19, 2006]</ref> In the 1960s, King would have witnessed the Democrat parties position on pro-segregation, against the Civil Rights Act. King was most likely aware of high profile Democrats such as Al Gore Sr. and [[Robert Byrd]] voting against repealing segregation. Southern Democrats rallied around [[Jim Crow]] laws and Black Codes which were targeted against King's message. [[Dixiecrat]]s blocked the social and political progress of black Southerners for decades. Was King unaware? Doubtful. It was Republican President Eisenhower who would push for integrating all white schools. To think King was a witness to all the upheaval Democrats caused and then became a Democrat is quite a stretch.

== Assassination ==

On April 3, 1968, King attended a rally in [[Memphis]], Tennessee to support of local black sanitation workers who were striking due to a wage imbalance with white colleagues. The following evening, he was standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel when a shot rang out. King was hit in the face and rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. He was 39 years old.<ref>http://history1900s.about.com/cs/martinlutherking/a/mlkassass_2.htm</ref>

News of King's death spread quickly and sparked riots in 100 U.S. cities. President [[Lyndon Johnson]] pleaded with Americans to refrain from violent demonstrations, saying "I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has taken Dr King." Presidential candidate [[Robert Kennedy]] was also vocal in pleading for peace.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/4/newsid_2453000/2453987.stm</ref>

King's assassin, a white ex-convict named [[James Earl Ray]], successfully eluded police for two months. He fled to Canada, where he lived under the alias Ramon George Sneyd. He was arrested on June 8, 1968 and confessed to the crime, for which he received a sentence of 99 years in prison.<ref>http://www.fullissue.com/index.php/james-earl-ray-biography-1929-1998.html</ref>

Although King is generally embraced by the American cultural establishment today, he and the authorities did not always have such a cordial relationship. In 1967, King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." The [[FBI]], under the direction of [[J. Edgar Hoover]], kept King under surveillance from 1961 until his death in 1968. The Bureau tapped his phones and bugged his hotel rooms. The FBI did not end its surveillance of King's wife, [[Coretta Scott King]], until many years after her husband's death.

Because of this, and despite Ray's confession to the murder, both [[Jesse Jackson]] and King's son Dexter Scott King have both said there was a government conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader. Jackson wrote the foreword to Ray's autobiography ''Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?'' and in it, he wrote "I have always believed that the government was part of a conspiracy, either directly or indirectly, to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."<ref>http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/assassins/ray/1.html</ref>

== Memorial ==

On Oct. 16, 2011, a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — the first honoring an African-American in the area of the Mall — was dedicated in Washington. The memorial — a four-acre tract along the Tidal Basin that is dotted with elms and cherry trees and anchored by an imposing granite statue of Dr. King — is the product of more than two decades of work. It was conceived in 1983 by members of Dr. King’s fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, and authorized by Congress in 1996.

The monument to Dr. Martin Luther King is not only the first to a black man on the Mall and its adjoining parks, but also the first to honor a person who was not a president. His stone figure faces the Jefferson Memorial across the water. Lincoln is at his back, and Roosevelt to his right.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/us/memorial-of-martin-luther-king-jr-dedicated-in-washington.html?_r=1&hp]

The monument was built in China and the inscription on the monument will be replaced because it is inaccurate attribution to MLK Jr. In addition, MLK Jr's likeness, one of folded arms in resistance, does not accurately portray the man.

== Quotes ==
* "We know from painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed." <ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=5wrCR_9VWowC&pg=PA346&dq=Freedom+is+never+voluntarily+given+by+the+oppressor%3B+it+must+be+demanded+by+the+oppressed&ei=_NxUSv-XJ6S4yQTg3ZGyBw
God's new Israel: religious interpretations of American destiny‎ - Page 346] by Conrad Cherry</ref>

* "Judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin."

* "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

* "I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

* "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

* "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

* "When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative."

* "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

* "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

* "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

* "Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

* "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan."

== See also ==

*[[Gallery of American Heroes]]
*[[Martin Luther King, Jr. Day]]
*[[Malcolm X]]

==Further reading==
* [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/resources/article/king_online_encyclopedia1/ King Online Encyclopedia], 1000+ articles by scholars
* [http://www.questia.com/library/history/united-states-history/african-american-history/famous-african-americans/martin-luther-king-jr.jsp Online books and articles on King]

== References ==

<references/>

{{DEFAULTSORT:King, Martin Luther}}

[[Category:Nobel laureates in Peace]]
[[Category:Children of Clergy]]
[[Category:Civil Rights Leaders]]
[[Category:Black History]]
[[Category:United States History]]
[[Category:1960s]]
{{Conservatism}}