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Untitled

October 23, 2009
By Justmemyselfandi SILVER, Council Bluffs, Iowa
Justmemyselfandi SILVER, Council Bluffs, Iowa
7 articles 0 photos 0 comments

The quote made by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”… When you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "n*****," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro…” is a compelling thought explaining the almost 3 millennia of slavery and segregation all around the world, not only of just blacks, but other races as well as other religions.

A statement made by The Buddha “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” can explain some of Dr. King’s thinking’s. I fell The Buddha’s quote tells exactly how The Dr.’s mind was working during his demonstrations. Dr. King had several logical arguments in his statement such as when he talks about how blacks (especially during this time period) were treated in public places such as; hotels, schools, movie theaters, on busses, and even in courts. There are always some good things about all struggles such as the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans trial in 1954 in which it was ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional; or the time when President Eisenhower sent federal troops and the national guard so that 9 students attending a school in Little Rock,
Arkansas could go to class.

Some of Dr. Kings ethical appeals can be linked to President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when he opens with the line, "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Which can be proved by a statement made in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” While on the topic of the pursuit of happiness there is a movie of the same title. In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness is a story of hope for blacks and anyone wishing to turn their life around. It is about a smart salesman and family man named Chris Gardner who invests his family’s savings in Osteo National bone-density scanners, an apparatus twice as expensive as an x-ray machine but with a slightly clearer image. This white elephant financially breaks the family, bringing troubles to his relationship with his wife Linda, who leaves him and moves to New York where she has received a job in a pizza parlor. She wishes to take their son Christopher with her, but Chris refuses because they both know that Linda will be unable to take care of him. Without money or a wife, but totally committed to his son Christopher, Chris sees the chance to fight for a stockbroker internship position at Dean Witter, offering a more promising career at the end of a six month unpaid training period. There are nineteen other candidates for the one position. Meanwhile, he encounters many challenges and difficulties, including a period of
homelessness and troubles with the IRS. In this movie even though Chris Gardener is not
living the best life he has to fight which all people must do to get what they want. This is true in Dr. King’s statement where he mentions that people are sleeping in their cars because hotels are denying service to blacks.

Dr. King makes very emotional vindications when he describes the many years of segregation and strife that blacks have dealt with for hundreds of thousands of years and how African-Americans were stripped of their native names and given new names to fit in with their new society. Many of these new societies were not only taking away The slaves native names they also took away their customs and anyone found violating this rule would be whipped, put to death, or else punished in some other cruel and unusual way. Even when blacks weren’t working as slaves they could still be “punished” by the pro-segregation group the Ku Klux Klan who were an extremist group that believed god told them they were supreme to the black movement.

As time went on African-Americans were eventually given all rights granted to a white male. Even though there are still some radical groups that are not fond of blacks they must hold their tongues and whips at bay or else be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.


The author's comments:
This was an assignment for school and i thought it turned out really well

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