Civil Rights: Are We Free? This is essay about black civil rights explaining some of the things that happened is history to blacks and a brief description of the current civil rights movement.

Essay by floridaboy28 June 2002

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Civil Rights: Are We Free?

The struggle for equality for Americans of African descent continues despite the significant advances made during the 1950s and 1960s. the question arises as to whether the struggle for Civil Rights has actually benefited the descendants of the many who sacrificed jobs, properties reputations, and even their lives. Has the American Civil Rights movement become irrelevant?

Since this nation's birth (European discovery of the New World), Blacks, with the exception to the Native American Indians, have suffered disproportionately more than any other group. Nonetheless the black struggle for civil rights is unparalleled. No group in America has or has had more difficulty assimilating into the American culture. When one considers Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for blacks, we must first begin with our nation's history and the enslavement of African Blacks.

Black Americans are often filled with rage when conjuring up visions of slavery in America.

Most White Americans, however, are apathetic concerning slavery. They did not own slaves, so why should they feel any guilt over something that happened one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago? I will evaluate this question and many others as we examine the struggle for America's largest minority group.

When one thinks of the Civil Rights Movement, we initially think of non-violent demonstrations only forty-years removed. From the boycott of the Montgomery bus system to the civil rights march on Washington D.C., the visions are forever implanted in the minds of most Americans. The struggle for civil rights, however, did not begin with Rosa Parks nor the effort to desegregate the public school system in Topeka, Kansas. The real struggle for civil rights began nearly four hundred years ago in the isles of the Caribbean's where Black were bought and sold into slavery. Their...