The civil rights leader Martin Luther KIng (C) waves to supporters 28 August 1963 on the Mall in Washington DC (Washington Monument in background) during the “March on Washington". King said the march was “the greatest demonstration of freedom in the history of the United States." Martin Luther King was assassinated on 04 April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray confessed to shooting King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. King’s killing sent shock waves through American society at the time, and is still regarded as a landmark event in recent US history. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read -/AFP/Getty Images)
Following the First World War there were 70 lynchings within a year. In 1919, there were 25 bloody race riots in the United States. In some towns returning black soldiers were beaten and forced to discard their uniforms. Mobs burned homes of black people. Segregation grew. In the violent Chicago race riot, millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed and many people were killed.
Civilized men believed violence should be no solution to their problems, so the N.A.A.C.P. (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) kept working for equal enforcement of the laws of the Constitution, particularly for the black citizen who did not have legal equality or full protection by the police. Little by little, black people have seen these objectives come more and more into being, largely through the Supreme Court’s affirmation of the great provisions of the Constitution.
In those states where the tax money of black people was spent for beautiful state universities to which blacks could not go, the lawyers of the N.A.A.C.P. convinced the Supreme Court that this should not be , and in 1954 the Court declared it wrong. The right of all children to a full and equal education without discrimination was upheld. Though there were big clashes between blacks and whites in some high schools and universities, black students were finally able to attend the former white schools.
Again, through the N. A. A. C. P., restrictive covenants denying black people the right to buy homes anywhere were broken down. Segregation in interstate travel was declared against the national interest. The Urban League had great effect in opening up to black workers employment in plants, factories, offices, and shops where formerly no black people had worked.
Meanwhile, books by black writers began to be published in increasing numbers, and to be translated abroad. Black music, from jazz to the symphonies of William Grant Still, has been heard around the world. Joe Louis became the heavyweight champion of the world, Jackie Robinson became a member of the Dodgers, and black music is still traveling.
In the so-called 'Civil Rights Movements’ many black people were active in the struggle for equal rights. Resistance took various forms, ranging from a bus boycott, to student sit-ins, a freedom ride and so forth.
These acts were led by some outstanding men, including Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
これらの運動はマルコムXやマーチン・ルーサー・キング・ジュニアを含む優れた指導者に導かれました。
Malcolm X gave emphasis to the self-consciousness of black people like Steve Biko in South Africa and had a profound influence, especially on intellectuals and the younger generation.
Just before his assassination in New York on Friday 21, 1965, Malcolm X talked about Afro-American history, in which he referred to the invented term 'Negro’:
“The worst trick of all is when he names us Negro and calls us Negro. And when we call ourselves that, we end up tricking ourselves. . . .We were scientifically produced by the white man. Whenever you see somebody who calls himself a Negro, he’s a product of Western civilization – not only Western civilization, but Western crime. The Negro, as he is called or calls himself in the West, is the best evidence that can be used against Western civilization today. One of the main reasons we are called Negro is so we won’t know who we really are. And when you call yourself that, you don’t know who you really are. You don’t know what you are, you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know what is yours. As long as you call yourself a Negro, nothing is yours. No languages – you can’t lay claim to any language, not even English; you mess it up. You can’t lay claim to any name, any type of name, that will identify you as something that you should be. You can’t lay claim to any culture as long as you use the word Negro to identify yourself. It attaches you to nothing." (Malcolm X on Afro-American History)
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have A Dream’ address at the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963. (See Appendix Afro-America 2) On that day more than 250,000 people, black and white, marched against racial discrimination in Washington. It was just a hundred years since Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
人種の問題を金持ち層が利用した構図を理解すれば、実は人種問題の本質は階級の問題だと気づけると思います。つまり、人類の歴史は持てるもの＝金持ち（英語ではthe robber, the haves）が持たざるもの＝一般大衆（the robbed, the haves-not）をいかに搾取して来たかの歴史でもあったし、あるわけです。
Black Lives Matterもその構図をきちんと理解しない限り見えて来ない、ということになるんかな。
Through the slave trade and slavery the plantation owners in the South realized enormous profits. They wanted to keep the system going on while the capitalists in the North wanted to abolish slavery to create a free labor market.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln became President. That is, the capitalists in the North succeeded in sending their representative to Washington D.C. as the president of the nation, so the South immediately left the United States and established a new government, the Confederate States of America. Shortly after, in 1861, the Civil War began.
At first, the South (the Confederate Armies) was stronger economically, but the North (the Union Armies) won the fight with the help of the freed black men in the North. The black men joined the ranks in the battlefield after Lincoln promised to abolish slavery if the battle was not ended by the first day of January, 1863. The war continued till 1865, and the Emancipation began. (See Appendix Afro-America l)
After the war, the Union Armies occupied the South temporarily and the period historians call the 'Reconstruction’ began. For a while freedom was wonderful for black people in the South. There appeared some black Representatives from the South in the Congress. Blacks held city and state offices.
Then reaction set in. The plantation owners regained their power after the Occupation Armies left the South. The vote was taken away from the freedmen in many states. The Ku Klux Klan began to ride. Jim Crow cars made their appearance on the railroads. Black churches and schools were burned. White teachers were driven away from the South. Freed with nothing, the former slaves were poor and often hungry.
Just after the war most slaves had little choice; they stayed at the same plantation as sharecroppers. The situation had not changed for most black people.
The power of reaction was so strong that in 1896 the highest court in the land ruled by a majority of eight to one that the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship rights to blacks, ensured only separate but equal accommodations.
