USA: Land of Freedom? 1945-1975
McCarthyism – McCarthyism is the act of making accusations of disloyalty or treason without proper evidence to support the claim. The term originated from the US, the phrase came to use around 1950 to 1956 and was used against communists as the fear campaign was spreading paranoia, the phrase was original used to criticise the anti-communists remarks of U.S Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations.
Rosa Parks – Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". February 4 her birthday and the day she was arrested December 1, are both Rosa Parks Day. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People organizers believed that Parks was the best person for seeing through a court after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws. By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955. The leaders of the local black community organized a bus boycott that began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws. Led by a young Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the boycott lasted more than a year during which ended only when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unlawful. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of civil rights.
Little Rock High School – A key event of the American Civil Rights Movement was nine black students who were enrolled at a all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unlawful. The court had mandated that all public schools in the country be integrated, later in the month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the “Little Rock Nine” into the school, and they started their first full day of classes on September, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green.
Lynching of Emmett Till – Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Emmett Till was from Chicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in Mississippi, when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam went to Emmett Till's great-uncle's house where they took the boy away to a barn, where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Three days later, Emmett’s body was discovered and retrieved from the river.
Martin Luther King Jr - Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi. He was behind the events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and…