Myths and heroes : civil rights movements

Synthèse d'anglais

Myths and Heroes

Today, I am going to deal with the notion myths and heroes. To explain the origin of the world or to explain a natural or social phenomenon myths have always been since the dawn of humanity the answer to all the unanswered questions. A myth is a story with a great symbolic power that often turn aroud a hero: an admired person for his outstanding qualities such as courage, bravery and altruism. Each population need these real role models to inspire them in their life and give them by the strengh they need to achieve their goals. This year, among the plenty of propositions offered by the notion, I decided to deal with the history of civil rights movement especially its famouses figures. Most people do not realize the sacrifices and risks that they had to make. Civil right leaders constantly risked their lives and fought for equality and freedom for African Americans. They can thus be considered as heroes. I will be dealing with the matter at hand through the following problem: How civil rights heroes managed to acquire their recognition from the us governement and white people?  In order to answer this question, I will first focus  on the black segregation then then talk about the fight they had to face and their achievements.

           Firstly, racism, discrimination and segregation formed a part of blacks people's everyday life during the last few decades. Segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from the others based on his race, skin colour,religion or gender. The most hitting example of this seperatio  is the case of Plessy vs Fergusson a landmark decision of th US Supreme Court that allows racial segregation for public facilities as long as they were "seperate but equal".Thus, this decision allows to Jim Crow laws to be established in the end of the reconstruction in 1877. Until 1960, black people had to use seperate water fountains, schools, restaurants, public librairies and were segregated in public spaces. These laws were also supported by groups like the Klu Klux Klan. As we learnt in an audio, this terrorist organistaion is composed by people who encouraged the white supremacy and wanted to control the african american community even destroy them. In order to reach their aweful goal, they used to lynch them, hurt them, burn their houses and even kill them.

But, from the 1950's to the 1960's, the civil rights movement was born and raised with him activists that couldn't support Jim crow laws and decided to fight back. Although, they were numerous means used by these future heroes. Indeed, non violent means were very efficient, as we saw in a video turned about Rosa Parks that got apprehented for refusing to give her seat to a white man in the bus, which trigered the blacks anger and they decided to boycott the bus for over a year. Moreover, Marthin Luther King, famous activist who promoted equality between all citizens in a pacific way and leader of plenty of sit-ins and non violent marches like Selma's march, delivered many speeches so as to respond to this "white supremacy": "I have a dream" speech remains one of the most famous speeches in history. These two activists can be found on Mr Brainwash mural. Others activists decided unlike Parks and Luther King to cross by the violent way. Indeed, Malcolm X was the complete opposite of MLK.As we saw in a video, he was for the seperation of black and white people, he promoted violence in order to establish equality and even a black supremacy . He used violence to manage his demonstrations.