Hi, please help me answer some researh questions. Course: African American Text

Question

Hi, please help me answer some researh questions.
Course: African American
Text Book I use: "Racism: A Short History" by George M. Fredrickson.

Thank you.

1. What was the Mississipi State Sovereignty Committee? How we're citizens impacted and what does this reveal about our US government?

2. Briefly describe some of the challenges facing the black community as depicted in the film Black Power Mixtape. Offer some reasons as to why you think Stokely Carmichael said being black meant that he was "born in jail".

3. Briefly describe the difference between reform vs. radical change and talk about the pros and cons of each side.

4. Malcom X argued for self-determination and once criticized the March on Washington efforts. Briefly explain why and talk about what he was interested in doing to help the black community.

5. Who were the Black Panther party and what did they want? What actions did yhey take and what were their beliefs?

6. In the short film " Nothing Happened", a black man was arrested and jailed without cause and later released under the stop and frisk policy. What does this say about our law enforcement system, about race and about justice in America?

7. Why does Angela Davis say that the prison industrial complex is a solution to social problems? Briefly describe what she means by this.

8. Why might many argue that the black lives matter movement is important? Where do you fit in relationship to this movement and the continued oppression of people with black skin?

Explanation / Answer

1.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (also called the Sov-Com) was a state agency which operated from 1956 to 1977. It was directed by the governor of Mississippi.The stated objective of the commission was to "[...] protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states" from "encroachment thereon by the Federal Government" It coordinated activities to portray the state and racial segregation in a more positive light.

During its existence, the commission profiled more than 87,000 names of people associated with the civil rights movement (which it opposed), and was complicit in the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County.

As the state's public relations campaign failed to dampen rising civil rights activism, the commission put people to work as a de factointelligence organization trying to identify citizens who might be supporting civil rights initiatives, be allied with communists, or just tipped state surveillance if their associations, activities, and travels did not seem to conform to segregationist norms. Swept up on lists of people under suspicion by such broad criteria were tens of thousands of African-American and white professionals, teachers, and government workers in agricultural and other agencies, churches, and community organizations. The "commission penetrated most of the major civil rights organizations in Mississippi, even planting clerical workers in the offices of activist attorneys. It informed police about planned marches or boycotts and encouraged police harassment of African-Americans who cooperated with civil rights groups. Its agents obstructed voter registration by blacks and harassed African-Americans seeking to attend white schools."

2. Black Americans have faced white aggression since they first arrived,
enslaved, on America’s shores nearly 400 years ago. The Black Power
movement signaled a new era, where blacks would no longer lay down
and accept the paltry offerings of white society and its power structure.
By meeting violence with violence, activists were accused of extremism.
The very definition of extremism took on new meaning, as it became a
term of propaganda used by whites to defend their continued reign of
abuse after blacks finally decided that enough was enough, that human
equality should finally be manifested in society.

3.Radical activists are ... radical. They want largescale, rapid change in society. The radical opposition surveys the existing social world; identifies a set of institutions and practices that currently exist; judges that these institutions and practices are fundamentally flawed in some important way; and demands fundamental change or replacement for these institutions and practices. So the radical activist demands immediate, concerted action to bring this complex state of affairs about. The radical activist is not intellectually committed to proving the feasibility of alternatives; he/she is committed in the heart to the abolition of the present injustice.

The liberal reformer is a critic as well. There are feature of the existing social world that he/she strenuously rejects. But the liberal reformer accepts the reality of the present. He/she proposes a set of immediate and mid-range reforms that will work to modify the unacceptable features of the present and move society towards a more satisfactory set of institutions and practices in the future. Gradual transformation is the model of change for the liberal reformer. Having confidence in the feasibility of a given set of pathways of reform is the highest intellectual value.

5.The Black Panther Party (BPP) had four desires : equality in education, housing, employment and civil rights. It had a 10 Point Plan to get its desired goals.

ten points of the party platform were:

1) “Freedom; the power to determine the destiny of the Black and oppressed communities.

2) Full Employment; give every person employment or guaranteed income.

3) End to robbery of Black communities; the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules as promised to ex-slaves during the reconstruction period following the emancipation of slavery.

4) Decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings; the land should be made into cooperatives so that the people can build.

5) Education for the people; that teaches the true history of Blacks and their role in present day society.

6) Free health care; health facilities which will develop preventive medical programs.

7) End to police brutality and murder of Black people and other people of color and oppressed people.

8) End to all wars of aggression; the various conflicts which exist stem directly from the United States ruling circle.

9) Freedom for all political prisoners; trials by juries that represent our peers.

10) Land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and community control of modern industry.”

The call for a revolutionary war against authority at the time of theVietnam War, alerted the FBI to the Black Panther’s activities. Whatever happened, the FBI was successful in destroying the Black Panther’s movement.

The commission's activities included attempting to preserve the state's segregation and Jim Crow laws, opposing school integration, and ensuring portrayal of the state "in a positive light." Among its first employees were a former FBI agent and a transfer from the state highway patrol. "The agency outwardly extolled racial harmony, but it secretly paid investigators and spies to gather both information and misinformation." Staff of the commission worked closely with, and in some cases funded, the notorious White Citizens' Councils

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