Rosa Parks
See: American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954), Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement
The United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) was a key turning point in United States history: after years of campaigning against Jim Crow laws and racial oppression, the Civil Rights Movement had obtained a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court reversing the "separate but equal" doctrine that had justified official racism for the past half century. While Brown itself was only a first step toward disestablishing school segregation in the South—a process that would require decades of litigation to accomplish, with uncertain results—it was even more important for its immediate political significance, as it gave the civil rights movement the added legitimacy of a Supreme Court decision declaring that state-sponsored segregation was both unjustifiable and wrong.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement") refused to get up out of her seat on a public bus to make room for white passengers. Rosa was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest the segregation of blacks and whites on public buses. The boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African-Americans and whites on public buses was lifted. This instance is often credited as the spark of the Civil Rights Movement.
The March on Washington
Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963. (not shown)
A. Philip Randolph had planned a March on Washington in 1941 in support of demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the Order.
Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the second March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which they proposed in 1962. The Kennedy administration applied great pressure on Randolph and King to call it off, but without success. The march was held on August 28, 1963.
Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals: "meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated education." Of these, the March's real focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.
The march was a success, although not without controversy. More than 200,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy Administration for the (largely ineffective) efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, John Lewis of SNCC took the Administration to task for how little it had done to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South. While he toned down his comments under pressure from others in the movement, his words still stung:
We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here—for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…or no wages at all. In good conscience, we cannot support the administration's civil rights bill.
This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses when engaging in peaceful demonstrations. This bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges like those in Americus, Georgia, where four young men are in jail, facing a death penalty, for engaging in peaceful protest.
I want to know, which side is the federal government on? The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it in the courts. Listen Mr. Kennedy, the black masses are on the march for jobs and for freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a 'cooling-off period'.
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared to be sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes to do it. As it turned out, it was Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, who followed through on this commitment.
Selma and the Voting Rights Act
SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, but made little headway in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead a number of marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from police. A Selma resident, Jimmie Lee Jackson was killed by police at a later march in February.
On March 7, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people who intended to walk the 54 miles from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Only six blocks into the march, however, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers and local law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire and bull whips, driving them back into Selma. John Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety, while at least 16 other marchers were hospitalized.
The national broadcast of the footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers seeking only the right to vote provoked a national response similar to the scenes from Birmingham two years earlier. While the marchers were able to obtain a court order permitting them to make the march without incident two weeks later, local whites murdered another voting rights supporter in the period between the marches. Four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove marchers back to Selma at night after the second march.
Johnson delivered a televised address to Congress eight days after the first march in support of the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated:
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6. The 1965 Act suspended poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter tests and authorized federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. African-Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to the courts. If voting discrimination occurred, the 1965 Act authorized the Attorney General of the United States to send federal examiners to replace local registrars. Johnson reportedly stated to associates that signing the bill had lost the South for the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.
The Act, however, had an immediate and positive impact for African-Americans. Within months of its passage on August 6, 1965, one quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one third by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout—74%—and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%.
Several Whites who opposed the voting rights act paid an immediate price as well. Sheriff Jim Clark of Mississippi who was infamous for using fire hoses and cattle prods to counteract civil rights marches was up for reelection in 1966. Taking off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform to get the Black portion of the vote, he was unsuccessful. At the election poll, he lost as Blacks voted, as they voted for the sake just to take him out of office by any means possible.
Blacks winning the right to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, barely 100 African-Americans held elective office in the U.S.; by 1989, there were more than 7,200, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every Black Belt county in Alabama had a black sheriff, and southern blacks held top positions within city, county, and state governments. Atlanta boasted a black mayor, Andrew Young, as did Jackson, Mississippi—Harvey Johnson—and New Orleans, with Ernest Morial. Black politicians on the national level included Barbara Jordan, who represented Texas in Congress, and former mayor Young, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter Administration. Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. John Lewis currently represents Georgia's 5th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, where he has served since 1987. Lewis sits on the House Ways and Means and Health committees.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Rights
Civil rights
Collective rights
Human rights
Inalienable rights
Individual rights
Natural rights
Negative rights
Positive rights
Social rights
Human rights refers to the concept of human beings as having universal rights, or status, regardless of legal jurisdiction, and likewise other localizing factors, such as ethnicity and nationality. Perhaps the most famous expression of human rights is found in the "United States Declaration of Independence".
The existence, validity and the content of human rights continue to be the subject to debate in philosophy and political science. However human rights are defined in international law & covenants, and further, in the domestic laws of many states. There is, however, a great deal of variance between how human rights norms are defined in these multiple contexts and how they are upheld in different local jurisdictions.
Within particular states, "human rights" refer to safeguards for the individual against arbitrary use of power by the government regarding 1) the well being of individuals, 2) the freedom and autonomy of individuals, and 3) the representation of the human interest in government. These rights commonly include the right to life, the right to an adequate standard of living, freedom from torture and other mistreatment, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, the right to self-determination, the right to education, and the right to participation in cultural and political life. These norms are based on the legal and political traditions of United Nations member states and are incorporated into international human rights instruments (see below).
With the exception of so called non-derogable human rights (the four most important are the right to life, the right to be free from slavery and the right to be free from retroactive application of penal laws), most human rights can be limited or even pushed aside during times of war.[1] Conduct in war is governed by International Humanitarian Law.
A double standard on human rights
Friday, December 09, 2005
Edmund R. Hanauer
On Dec. 10, 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a major step in the struggle to protect the rights of all humanity. The United States played a key role in the passage.
Defense of human rights is often given as a basis for U.S. foreign policies.
President George W. Bush argues that a major reason for invading Iraq was to liberate Iraqis from oppression. The State Department issues yearly reports on the status of human rights around the world.
While the United States raises human rights issues when governments involved are "unfriendly," it remains largely silent when it comes to friends. Washington has even sought to subvert democratic governments deemed unfriendly: Iran, Chile and Guatemala, among others.
The United States has supported, even helped to power, brutal but friendly dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a friend of the United States during the 1980s. The excuse was the Cold War; now it is terrorism, even though the state terrorism of pro-U.S. regimes kills far more people than do terrorist groups seeking state power.
A glaring example of Washington's double standard is U.S. support for Israel in the form of financial and military aid totaling nearly $3 billion a year, along with U.S. vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of Israel's denial of the human rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians. The United States has refused to pressure Israel to remove Jewish settlements built on confiscated Palestinian land, settlements illegal under international law.
There are three categories of Palestinians:
About 2.4 million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel seized in the 1967 War. After Israeli settlers and troops left Gaza this summer, 1.3 million Gaza Palestinians are largely, but not entirely, free from Israeli occupation. B'Tselem, Israel's leading human rights group, reported in 1998 that Israel was violating 29 of the 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation. The situation has worsened under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In recent months, Amnesty International deplored Israel's unwillingness to stop settler violence against Palestinians. Human Rights Watch accused Israel of failing to protect Palestinian civilians from unlawful attacks by Israeli soldiers. And the European Union criticized Israel's violations of the rights of 200,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem.
Human Rights Watch took the unusual step of publicly criticizing Sen. Hilary Clinton for defending the separation wall Israel is building, since 80 percent of it is in the West Bank, rather than on the Israel-West Bank border. The International Court of Justice has declared the West Bank portions of the wall illegal. The wall limits or denies tens of thousands of Palestinians access to jobs, agricultural lands, hospitals, schools, families and friends, and even water. Palestinians trapped on the "Israeli side" of the wall must obtain special permits from Israel to reside in their own homes.
Close to 1 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel (Israeli Arabs). They are second-class citizens when it comes to education, housing, the right to own land, social services, employment and political rights. This systemic discrimination is amply documented by reports by Israeli and U.S. human rights groups, as well as by the U.S. State Department.
Similar governmental policies toward Jews or blacks anywhere are rightly denounced as anti-Semitic or racist.
The third group of Palestinians is made up of 3 million to 4 million refugees whom Israel does not allow to return. In 1948, close to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes during the Arab-Israel War, many forced out by Israeli terrorist tactics.
Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right of people to leave or return to their homeland and was cited in support of Russian Jews seeking to leave the Soviet Union. On Dec. 11, 1948, the United Nations passed Resolution 194, which supported the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. While the United Nations has yearly - with U.S. support - reaffirmed that right, President Bush recently opposed it.
Washington's policies toward Palestinians make a mockery of U.S. claims to uphold human rights. It tarnishes our reputation among citizens of other democracies. It makes it easier for anti-U.S. terrorist groups to find recruits: They argue that the United States hates Muslims and Arabs and cite U.S. support of Israel's displacement of Palestinians. It betrays the values of millions of Americans who expect our elected leaders to support human rights, including freedom and self-determination, for all peoples.
But the worst result of Washington's blanket support for Israel is that by supporting Israel's occupation and gradual takeover of Palestinian lands, Washington prevents the creation of a viable Palestinian state and a just and lasting peace and strengthens the hawks and weakens the doves among both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. This means more needless Israeli and Palestinian deaths.
Hanauer, an American Jewish human rights activist, is director of Search for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel, a Boston-based human rights group.
© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
Hired guns, hired pens leave a trail of trouble
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Elizabeth Sullivan
Plain Dealer Columnist
Seven retired U.S. generals turned up in Croatia a decade ago for a U.S.- sanctioned contract with a Croatian military still subject to a U.N. arms embargo.
The advisers weren't any old soldiers. Their bosses included Carl Vuono, former chief of staff of the U.S. Army, and Crosby Saint, former commanding general of U.S. Army troops in Europe.
At the time, a spokesman for their firm, Military Professional Resources Inc., said the defense contractor was there just to instill Western democratic values in the Croatian military.
Within months, the newly minted democrats had launched a blitz attack on a breakaway Serb region. Subsequent U.N. indictments allege it amounted to a criminal conspiracy to drive as many as 200,000 ethnic Serb citizens out of Croatia. At least 150 disabled or elderly civilians were murdered and more than 12,000 homes were looted and/or burned.
MPRI strenuously denied doing anything wrong - and quickly picked up a new contract in Bosnia.
Yet the private deal gave the U.S. military deniability for what many European observers believed was a sanctioned attempt to alter the military balance in the Balkans to force the Serbs to the bargaining table. The strategy worked.
It also marked the moment when U.S. military contractors began taking an outsized role in war zones. These days in Iraq, military contractors do everything from driving trucks to running a multimillion-dollar media campaign and training and advising Iraqi units.
In the 1991 Gulf War, one of every 50 people deployed to the region was a military contractor, the New York Times estimated a few years back. For Bosnia peacekeeping in 1996, that number rose to one in 10, thanks to a large paid police force.
In Iraq , the Associated Press says, experts put the number of contractors anywhere from under 10,000 to more than 20,000.
The higher estimate translates to one contractor for every eight U.S. soldiers.
Many, notably truck drivers, are doing jobs few soldiers want. Nearly 300 are known to have died - and the number could be higher, since no official count is kept.
Yet the consequences - in lessened accountability and training, lax oversight, potential corruptibility, and future hidden costs from lawsuits and unachieved military goals - add up to a building problem that could involve eventual loss of control over crucial aspects of the battlefield.
In 2004, three contractors at the Abu Ghraib prison were named in the Army's abuse investigation. One allegedly raped an Iraqi boy, according to a subsequent civil suit.
So far, the worst the three suffered publicly has been firing by their employers, although civil suits are pending and so, apparently, is a Justice Department investigation.
Two of the contractors worked for a firm that didn't even have a Pentagon contract.
They were on the taxpayers' payroll through a convoluted farming- out of Iraq jobs from the Pentagon to the Interior Department - a device that seems tailor-made to avoid congressional and executive oversight.
Contractors in Iraq sometimes don't even feel answerable to the taxpayers who pay their very high tabs.
The Lincoln Group, a contractor that advertises media jobs in Iraq at up to $150,000 a year, is the focus of a Pentagon investigation into whether it exceeded its mandate and the limits of the law. The Los Angeles Times reported late last month that Lincoln sometimes hid its affiliation with the U.S. government, had employees pose as journalists and may have paid to place pro-U.S. news stories in the Iraqi media.
Yet the firm, which denies wrongdoing, has been notably unforthcoming in the face of media inquiries.
Why use outside contractors who are not subject to the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice and who don't have the same oversight or constraints as U.S. special operations forces specially trained in wartime information operations?
Unfortunately, the answer seems to be: greater secrecy, deniability and flexibility. If the folks get caught doing something naughty, fire them - and give the contractor a deal somewhere else.
Five years ago, U.S. defense contractor DynCorp had to send a handful of employees home from Bosnia after they reportedly got caught with sex slaves. No criminal charges were filed. DynCorp continued to get contracts.
Such antics are not what the public wants to buy with its hard-earned defense dollars.
The U.S. military already is voluntary. Privatizing it seems like a recipe for favoritism and waste. In Iraq, the warning signs are there.
Sullivan is The Plain Dealer's foreign-affairs columnist and an associate editor of the editorial pages.
Contact her at: bsullivan@ plaind.com, 216-999-6153
© 2005 The Plain Dealer
© 2005 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.
I have heard it reported that over 27 million slaves are being used in much the same manner that African-Americans were being treated before the American Civil War. TODAY 2005 - Yet, our priorities seem to be ranked with Materialism and self-interest near the top. A great deal of attention is being paid to the opinions and views of self-styled Conservatives, without a clear view of the intellectual content of that one word, much like the War on Communism occupied much of the 20th century, little will come of any sound conservative principle. The main thrust of both the War on Communism and the Conservative Movement seems to be Antisocialism. Forget the achievements in governmental organizations, academic, cultural and philanthropic institutions, the main effort goes into destruction of altruism in almost any manifestation, while the world goes on with a civilization spiraling back toward the dark ages and Feudalism. And all it takes is one little Rosa Parks to light the spark so that the light can shine on the nobility of mankind.
posted by James E. Opfell @ 9:40 PM
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