Human and Civil Rights

To download the report , click here.

Work done by Marcucci and Moyano 

Blanca Lòpez Cabrera & Fernando Chazarreta 

To read more, click here.





http://www.humanrightsactioncenter.org

Apartheid In South Africa

Work done by  Di Loreto, María Eva

                        Artaza-Martínez, Marianela

Civil Rights Movement

US Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movements

Civil rights are personal liberties that belong to an individual, owing to his or her status as a citizen.

The civil rights movements aimed to eliminate slavery, racism, and social and religious discrimination. These movements had great, courageous leaders and participants who risked, and in some cases lost their lives for the sake of equality and racial justice. Leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela planned and led non-violent campaigns in pursuit of liberty and equality.

The pioneer of these movements was Mahatma Gandhi. His name means “great soul” in Sanskrit. He was born in India in 1869, when this country was part of the commonwealth ruled by the British Empire. Indian population was divided due to geographical, racial, social, cultural, linguistic, and religious reasons, but also it was divided into rich and poor

He knew about racial discrimination in South Africa, where he moved after graduating as a lawyer in London. It was then the idea of truth and firmness what inspired him “inflicting oneself the suffering one would impose to the enemy”. It demands great control, every insult, beating, imprisonment should be born patiently, make the opponent see their wrongdoing.

True to his belief in peaceful and non-violent civil resistance, Gandhi devoted his life to make India an independent country. By the time he died at 78 years old, India had already celebrated its independence.

Quotes from Gandhi: “They may torture my body, break my bones, and even kill me. Then they will have my dead-body not my obedience; “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”.

Deeply influenced by the works of Gandhi, King made the struggle for civil liberty for African-American in the U.S.A. his sole motto. Although King became involved in the civil rights movement from his university days, his first major success came only in 1955 in Alabama. That year a black woman named Rosa Parks was arrested by refusing to surrender her seat to a white passenger. In protest, African-American activists boycotted the state’s transport system and chose King as their leader. The boycott continued 383 days until the U.S.A. Supreme Court declared Alabama’s racial segregation laws unconstitutional. In December 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Delivering his Nobel lecture he said: “Non violence is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it”. Four years later, he was shot dead.

As regard Nelson Mandela, he was a son of an African’s tribal chief, and he became leader of the African National congress, political party that called for racial equality. In 1964, after sabotaging the government many times, he was sent to prison; there he became a symbol of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid.

Civil rights movements were successful at least by some measures. The movements were also an inspiration; they evoked and embodied high moral ideas of racial equality and justice. Technology played a key role in these movements by making the struggles of protesters highly visible. The world could not help but recognize the righteousness of the protesters cause and the evil, violent repression necessary to subdue the wish for justice.

Students:

Cuello, Ana

Orieta Bertolotti, M. Cecilia


Other posts on the subject: Pioneer in India; A bird in a cage;   America also needs equality; Human Rights. 

Rock 80-90s and Solidarity

Word done by Pagnotta and Maldonado

Human Rights

Work presented by Wendt Barrios and Grassino

Other posts in this blog from previous years: Gandhi,Luther King, Mandela

Growing up during the Apartheid Era

As I posted in the previous entry, whenever we can listen to or read about someone who gives us first hand experience on a historical event we have to take advantage of that situation to know and even "feel" what it was all about.
Some time ago I asked my South African friend Marianne Pieterse to write something about her memories of growing up during the Apartheid_the barbaric set of laws that made racism legal in that country for years_ and she committed to the task with such a zeal and dedication that we got into her skin and we could get a glimpse of what it was like to live in South Africa in those times.
To read what Marianne sent us, click here and to dowload the PPP I prepared for the class, click here.

I think that all of us learned a lesson...

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.Nelson Mandela


I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man. Nelson Mandela

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.Nelson Mandela

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.Nelson Mandela

The last one is one we should believe in!!!

Civil Rights_Third part: America also needs equality

1948

Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." The order also creates the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and opportunity in the Armed Services.

1954


The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP* attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

1955


Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.


(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.

1957

Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.


(Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."*


1961

Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.


1962

James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.


1963

Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

Jun
(Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries*. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.

Aug. 28
(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

1964
Jan. 23
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax*, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.

July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Aug. 4
(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965

Feb. 21
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, Black Nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam.

March 7
(Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.

Aug. 10
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.



Part 3 of a 3-part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009

Thanks Daniel for such a good research

Civil rights: Second part A bird in a cage – Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted* in 1961.

After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC* executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto We Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour.It was In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow* the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.

Part 2 of a 3-part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009

Civil Rights:First part: A pioneer in India

Gandhi takes on Domestic Problems

In 1932, Gandhi began new civil-disobedience campaigns against the British. Arrested twice, the Mahatma fasted* for long periods several times; these fasts were effective measures against the British, because revolution might well have broken out in India if he had died. In September 1932, while in jail, Gandhi undertook a "fast unto death" to improve the status of the Hindu Untouchables*. The British, by permitting the Untouchables to be considered as a separate part of the Indian electorate, were, according to Gandhi, countenancing an injustice. Although he was himself a member of an upper caste, Gandhi was the great leader of the movement in India dedicated to eradicating the unjust social and economic aspects of the caste system.

In 1934 Gandhi formally resigned from politics, being replaced as leader of the Congress party by Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhi traveled through India, teaching ahimsa and demanding eradication of "untouchability." The esteem in which he was held was the measure of his political power. So great was this power that the limited home rule granted by the British in 1935 could not be implemented until Gandhi approved it. A few years later, in 1939, he again returned to active political life because of the pending federation of Indian principalities with the rest of India. His first act was a fast, designed to force the ruler of the state of Rajkot to modify his autocratic rule. Public unrest caused by the fast was so great that the colonial government intervened; the demands were granted. The Mahatma again became the most important political figure in India.


Independence for India

When World War II broke out; the Congress party and Gandhi demanded a declaration of war aims and their application to India. As a reaction to the unsatisfactory response from the British, the party decided not to support Britain in the war unless the country were granted complete and immediate independence. The British refused, offering compromises that were rejected. When Japan entered the war, Gandhi still refused to agree to Indian participation. He was interned in 1942 but was released two years later because of failing health.


Part 1 of a 3 part assignment by Daniel Cappi, L y C II, 2009