African-American Protest Music from the 60s

A true reading of American history reveals this society as profoundly unfree in its origins, its history, and its psychology. That one of the greatest expressions of human freedom should be manifested in our Constitution by men who were mostly slave owners themselves, including the brilliant and profound Thomas Jefferson, is one of the ironies and contradictions with which our history is filled. Because of the incessant propaganda about our being the best country in the world that fills our airwaves and private conversations, a realistic and mature evaluation of own true national faults and virtues is difficult.

The simple facts are known by most people: we conquered, killed, and imprisoned most of the indigenous inhabitants, and imported as many as 20 million Africans, two-thirds of whom did not survive the horrors of their ocean passage, to produce capital for a relative handful of white landowners, particularly where the climate favored large-scale plantation farming of crops such as cotton and tobacco. These African slaves who were forcibly captured and transported here from the 16th to the mid-19th century were subjected to inhuman degradation and gross and incessant violations of all human rights. They were considered as a literal embodiment of the capitalist notion of a commodity û human beings whose only value was monetary, both in their being and in their capacity to create wealth for their oppressors.

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and spirituality, and served as the same kind of survival mechanism that the early spirituals had provided their forebears. It was profoundly communal, reinforcing their sense of purpose and unity against a common enemy. Many new verses were made up in the spontaneous style of improvisation always characteristic of African-American music, like blues or jazz. Violence increased. There were bombings of black churches and murders of civil rights workers. A national television audience was disgusted and outraged as cops, police dogs, and fire hoses abused peaceful protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. In November 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot, shocking Americans already numbed by a steady diet of violence on the television news from around the country. 10,000 protesters marched from Selma, site of racial murders, to the state capital of Montgomery, spat on and jeered at by hundreds of ignorant and vicious whites. The marchers sang songs and held hands. But peaceful, non-violent protest and uplifting songs were not eradicating deeply entrenched racism in the United States of America. The black masses saw this clearly with every new outrage by angry whites against principled, non-violent protesters, as well as repeated
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War II, African American, West Africa, Nietzcsche Greeks, Thomas Jefferson, Civil War, King's Dream, Latino Asian, Huey Cobra, Denmark Vesey, civil rights, african american, martin luther, protest music, world war ii, folk music, rights movement, war ii, civil rights movement, world war, luther king, american music, martin luther king, african american music, martin luther king's,
Approximate Word count = 5136
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page)