“Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago’s civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago’s powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming “two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.” President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report.”
Day: April 17, 2018
Case for Reparations
Here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article on the history of state-sanctioned housing discrimination,“Case for Reparations.”
Here’s a critique of Coates, “Case Against Reparations” by Kevin Williamson
Innocent Black Men Arrested in Starbucks
After our discussion today in class and reading DR. King’s blog post about continued inequality and discrimination in the United States for black people, I was reminded of a story on the news I saw a couple of days ago. Last week two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks just for waiting for a friend. The store manager called the police on the two black men who were waiting to meet a friend saying that they were trespassing. Soon six police officers arrived and arrested the men for “not complying and trespassing.” This was absolutely discrimination, there is no doubt in my mind that if the two men were white that the store manager would have never called the police. This act has led to protests in Philadelphia and a boycott of Starbucks. The CEO of Starbucks now plans to implement training for all employees to try and eliminate discrimination in his stores.
