U.S. History 101: "We The People"? and 100 Milestone Documents, Focus on Afrikans...

[RBG Street Scholar]

U.S. History 101: "We The People"? and 100 Milestone Documents, Focus on Afrikans in America

Ice Breaker Video PE- Pump The Music The Patriot Act, assaults on civil, political and religious liberties, Warrantless wiretapping, the defacto resending of the Posse Comitatus Act, Massive invasions of privacy in the name of the war on terror, Torture at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison death camps in Afganastan and elsewhere and I can go on. A President that behaves above the law with impunity and a congress that cosigns if nothing else but by default. All this comes to impact, reverberate and repress the New Afrikan Liberation Movement directly. Yes, we have indeed moved into the era of the Amerikkka police state-Hitlerian empire. None of this could or should have happened if the "United Snakes" government represented and respected their Constitution and "rule of law". The founding Father (*our former slavemasters) are rolling in their graves. And none of this would have lasted this long (and the worst is yet to come) if Congress had the political courage, integrity and balls to defend, what they say is, their Constitution. *Out of the 55 delegates who attended the United States Constitutional Convention there were only two - John Adams and Alexander Hamilton-that didn't own slaves. That’s why New Afrikan people, young and old alike, have to make a militant commitment to fight for National Liberation and Self Determination. History borns out the fact that in it relations to Afrikan people the U.S. States (Snakes) has been a legacy of hypocrisy, repression, slavery, racism, suffering and death. What you see them doing in the photo-story I made above to introduce this lesson they have been doing to us for 400 years, ie. Genocide. Meanwhile, in view of the fact that most of us will forever live and die old in Amerikkka , if it still exist (the North American Union vs a nuclear holocaust), we must fight hand, tooth and nail to see to this empire re-instituting and living up to the Constitution. We must cherish the Constitution and the fundamental freedoms it protects until such time as we draw up and enact our own. This is absolutely necessary to do not only for us, but more importantly, for our children and our yet to be born. 100 Milestone Documents From the Introduction Why Were these 100 Documents Chosen? The list begins with the Lee Resolution of June 7, 1776, a simple document resolving that the United Colonies “are, and of right, ought to be free and independent states. . .” and ends with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a statute that helped fulfill the promise of freedom inherent in the first documents on the list. The remaining milestone documents are among the thousands of public laws, Supreme Court decisions, inaugural speeches, treaties, constitutional amendments, and other documents that have influenced the course of U.S. history. They have helped shape the national character, and they reflect our diversity, our unity, and our commitment as a nation to continue our work toward forming “a more perfect union.” The decision not to include milestone documents since 1965 was a deliberate acknowledgement of the difficulty in examining more recent history. As stated in the guidelines for the National History Standards, developed by the National Center for History in the Schools, “Historians can never attain complete objectivity, but they tend to fall shortest of the goal when they deal with current or very recent events.” As directly relating to Afrikans in America: Constitution of the United States (1787) Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)- The Court's most important decision on slavery. Missouri slave Dred Scott claimed freedom when his master took him to the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery had been abolished. In a 50-page opinion, Chief Justice Roger Taney said Scott was still a slave and declared that blacks were "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." Taney's decision infuriated northerners and helped lead to the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860. Emancipation Proclamation (1863) Emancipation Proclamation (1862) - Undeniably a tool used by Lincoln to vanquish the South, the proclamation freed slaves in Confederate states but not those in the Union. Nevertheless, it inspired some 200,000 black soldiers and sailors to enlist in the Union army and navy - a significant surge in manpower for the North. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865) 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868) 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights (1870) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - A result of Plessy's arrest for refusing to sit in a train car assigned for "colored" people, this case is one of the most repudiated the Supreme Court has ever decided. It greased the wheels for segregation and Jim Crow laws by establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal." Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) - This landmark case declared that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and marked the beginning of the end of the Supreme Court's sanctions of state-sponsored segregation. The first decision authored by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the case revealed the new, more activist role that the Court would take in protecting civil rights under his leadership. Executive Order 10730: Desegregation of Central High School (1957) Civil Rights Act (1964) Voting Rights Act (1965) The Book: Also See RBG Truth Serum EduBlog (What's Wrong With We The People) FIGHT THE POWER !!! Companion EduBlog /Classroom U.S History 102: A People's History Of The United States / by Howard Zinn: RBGz Audio and History Is A Weapon e-Books A RBG Street Scholar Educational Design