All Men Are Created Equal
By: David • Essay • 1,184 Words • April 18, 2010 • 1,914 Views
All Men Are Created Equal
All men are created equal. That has been proven true in only fantasies with princesses and knights in shining armor. Even then, there are still discriminations visible the hero; always handsome, with blonde hair, stunning blue eyes, and being white is with out question. The world is full of stereotypes. If a person is black, he/she is in a gang, if he/she is Hispanic then they are automatically living under poverty and must have jumped the border; women must be weak. The United States has been known as the melting pot of the world because everyone of its citizens had to move here one generation or another. America's government has been trying to have its citizens become les discriminative.
The Africans that were put into slavery stated in the United States when there was not even a United States. The American slave trade started at as far back as 1619 when slaves were bought from the Dutch. In fact, most people think that slaves became popular in George Washington's time. Also during the Civil war, there were many misleading facts. Most people believe that everyone in the north was against slavery and in the south, everyone appreciated it. This is what the majority felt not everyone with a unison opinion. Another misconception is that all the soldiers that were black were from the north. Some troops were from the south and made up of blacks. One of the big falsehoods was that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all black slaves. In truth, it did not free any slaves since this document only applied to the confederacy and the south broke off. Lincoln did however start a movement.
Soon the constitution was amended to say that slavery was now unlawful. It stated that no person could be forced to work unless as punishment for a crime that was proven. The next amendment said that citizenship was to be given to anyone born in the United States or have parents in the United States. The fifthteenth amendment stated that no person should loose the privilege to vote because of race or of color.
In the late eighteenth century and early, ninth there was a disagreement that lead to the Supreme Court. In Plessy v. Ferguson a person who was 1/8, black was arrested for riding the white car in a Louisiana train. This arouse the African Americans should be treated equal. This was settled by the courts deciding to segregate thing. How ever this time they were to be segregated equally. This ruling stood until the 1950's. When a young girl was forced to walk over a mile to a black school through a railroad switch back, Mr. Brown, her father, stepped in. He talk to the white school that was only seven blocks from her house. The school said that they would not accept a black student. This caused the case to go through the court systems up to the Supreme Court. It was ruled that separate but equal was not so equal after all. Linda was able to attend the white school in Topeka Kansas. A few years later, the Civil Rights act came about. The civil rights act said that the government must make it where all the people who qualify in the constitution are allowed to vote, and to vote safely.
Affirmative Action was then put into play. This was a set of policies to help insure that discrimination would not happen in the work place. However, this cased many people to get rid of their good majority workers and replace them with some one who had to be trained again to meet the set quota. The government no longer requires a certain percentage for affirmative action.
All this while Martin Luther King Jr. came to be know. He was a black preacher who was against violence and for freedom. Before he was assonated, he had created many rallys and also created the longest freedom marches. His most famous moment was most likely when he gave