The Development of Civil Rights

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that from the very beginning of colonial America, African Americans were subjugated. The paper discusses the pervasiveness of slavery and the establishment of the abolitionist movement that led to the brutal American Civil War. The paper shows how racial prejudice was not removed until the momentous 1954 'Brown v. Board of Education' decision. The paper highlights how the words of the law and American ideals mattered little until African Americans fought with blood, sweat, toil and legal wrangling for the constitutionally given rights and the ideals of the "Declaration of Independence."

From the Paper:

"From the very beginning of colonial America, African-Americans were subjugated, even while whites strove to create 'Shining Cities' on a hill of moral rectitude, in the case of the New England Puritans or the ambitious whites who strove to make their fortune on the cotton and tobacco plantations of the South. The tremendous economic need for labor to operate a plantation or fueled this prejudice against African-Americans, but often the prejudice against blacks transcended mere economics and can only be analyzed as a cultural phenomenon, whereby the perceived 'unique' identity of the South was fused to the ostracization and subjugation of African-Americans. Even after the death of plantation culture African-Americans were denied basic civil rights and even before the cotton gin's invention and the profitability of the cash crop of cotton, slavery was upheld with zeal by Southern advocates of states' rights."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ruiz, R. "Blacks and the American Revolution." Colorado College. 13 Jun 2008.http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/HY/HY243Ruiz/Research/revolution.html
• "Introduction to Colonial African American Life." Colonial Williamsburg. 13 Jun 2008 http://www.history.org/almanack/people/african/aaintro.cfm
• Horton, James. "Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle towards National Ideals." History Now. 2007. 13 Jun 2008. http://www.historynow.org/09_2007/historian3.html

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