Our New Civil Right Movement

But such is not the sate of the case. I sat it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeather by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people! 
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour. 

  I choose this quote from because Fredrick Douglass was a powerful man with his words and actions. If you look at the things that are going on today what he is speaking about it's not too far removed. The difference is that we as people of color do not care so much about our ancestors as much as past generations. Coming from a family deeply rooted in the civil right movement I understand to respect the things that people have died for such as the right to vote, woman’s right, Jim Crow and a host of others. As time went on we as a people of color have assimilated to a lot of White American custom such as July 4th. Fredrick Douglass talks about how the 4th means something different to slaves or formers slaves. How many years have passed that we as a people have lost that meaning that those slaves had? We were given rights, so we felt ok. We were given the right to vote, Jim crow laws were taken away, and woman got there right as well. How many people looked at the bill that was signed when it came to the voting rights act. In 2006 President Obama had to speak with Congress to renew the Voting rights act of 1965. I am saying all this because let’s bring things to today and our current President Donald Trump who is fueling a semi boiling racial issue in this country. Armed and police officers men have killed black men and woman. The killings gave rise to a new movement similar to the civil right movement that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the head of Black Lives Matter a demonstration that got a lot of people famous and not famous talking up and speaking out about the racial issues in the country. A football Player who was a former starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers by the name of Colin Kaepernick choose to sit for the national anthem after that he decided to kneel for the anthem. This act was done to protest the killings of African American men and woman by police officers. This action put the nation in an uproar because so many people began to do the same thing and even some teams did not come out during the anthem. When a team in the U.S. team in most sports wins a championship, they take a trip to the white house. The Golden State Warriors won the N.B.A championship and president trump offered them to come, and the team captain Stephen Curry turned down the invite, and some other player also said things to the president. Trump gave a speech in one of the old Jim Crow states and called players Sons a Bitches. I'm bringing all this up because Colin  Kaepernick’s original messages were changed to how he is disrespectful to the flag and troops. This is not why he did it, but this is all the media shows, and Donald Trump talks about Our civil rights leader of the past that had an impact were killed, and no one has come out to raise people up since. Our civil rights are again being tested in this country it might be on a different scale, but we need to revisit our roots in this country stand strong together and get things done for our communities here and abroad such as Puerto Rico.  Everyone in the country should have the same civil rights, but when you have the same people running the same thing for years, they just get better on how to hide it.



This time the revolution will be televised

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