the cold war beginsthe american indians section 1 to trace the evolving understanding of freedom in...

The Cold War BeginsThe American Indians

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• To trace the evolving understanding of freedom in American history.

Objective


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Essential Question• How has the understanding of

freedom evolved from the founding of the English American colonies to the modern late 20th century understanding?


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• In order to comprehend why things are as they are in the present, whether technology, political systems, ideas or even music, we must understand how they began and evolved into what they are today.


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• The most important ideas of today have their roots in the past. Few ideas are original. Often, ideas have undergone many changes in their meaning as well. A good example of this are ideas about government and the rights of people. A good example of this is the idea of freedom.


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The Evolving Meaning of Freedom• Americans guard their liberty dearly. When

asked what makes them most proud to be an American, the most frequently response is “freedom.” But, freedom has not, and continues not to mean the same thing to everyone. To understand America’s history and to understand America today it is essential to know the history of freedom in America.


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The Importance of Knowing History,

• How people today view the idea of freedom is very different from the past, whether we are talking about 50 years ago, or centuries ago. Freedom, liberty, and equality are all terms that Americans view as largely interchangeable. Everyone, regardless of race, color, or religion should be treated the same, and everyone should have an equal opportunity to choose their path in life. These views reflect American core values.

• However, these core American values were not always shared by all Americans. And even today, not all Americans agree on what equal opportunity looks like. In other words, the meaning of freedom has evolved and been a source of contention, and still remains so today.


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• In fact, for most of human history it was accepted that society should be organized along a rigid hierarchy, a system of people ranked one above another. It was accepted that some people were better than others. Monarchs stood at the top, followed by a small group of nobles. Most people comprised the peasantry. Everyone was expected to know their proper place and do as they were told. Freedom was not even a word in peoples’ vocabularies.


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• England, despite some limits on the power of their monarch, shared the common world view of the essential inequality of people. But it was here in England, the parent of the future United States, where cracks first appeared in the accepted view of hierarchy. In was in England, for the first time since antiquity where some people began speaking of what we know as freedom.


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John Locke challenges Hierarchy• Political philosopher and social psychologist,

John Locke, was an outspoken supporter of equal rights within a governed society. He espoused the natural rights of man, namely the right to life, liberty and property, and he articulated that every government’s purpose is to secure these rights for its citizens. Freedom, in Locke’s view meant the essential equality of all before the law and a government answerable to its’ people.


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John Locke challenges Hierarchy• Locke was a social contract theorist, believing

that the legitimacy of government relies on consent from its citizens which is given on the basis of equality. Locke’s view of equality was not limited to the political realm; he also promoted religious toleration, with atheism being the one notable exception.


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John Locke Challenges Hierarchy• Locke himself formulated

man's basic natural right as "to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate," and Locke's ideas found echoes in some of the early American state constitutions.

• Locke’s ideas challenged the accepted views of hierarchy as a natural way to organize society.

• His views influenced America’s Founding Fathers.


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John Locke• But when Locke wrote about the

natural equality of all men he lived in a country and a world which accepted hierarchy as natural. He also lived at a time when slavery was accepted.

• Sadly, Locke was an imperfect messenger of freedom and equality. He was an investor in the slave trade.

• His ideas on equality and human rights, however, were far bigger than him.


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Locke’s Influence• Natural rights, according to American

tradition, are those rights granted to human-kind by their Creator, or as Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence—essentially borrowing from John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1690)—the rights accorded by "Nature and Nature's God." In the Declaration, these are described as "unalienable" rights, and include the recognition that "all men are created equal" and that all have rights to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."


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Equality: A Basic Component of American Freedom

• Jefferson, an important Founding Father borrowed heavily from John Locke when he penned the Declaration of Independence.

• The Declaration proclaims equality as a universal entitlement.

• The nation-state created by the Declaration – the U.S.A. is also reflects Locke’s idea of the social contract theory.


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• How was freedom defined by the Declaration of Independence?

• Equality, liberty, opportunity, and representative government

• Everyone is equal under the law• Everyone has a right to live their life as they please as long as

it doesn’t harm others• Everyone has an equal opportunity• Everyone has a right to pursue his happiness• Everyone has an equal voice (government is accountable to

the people)


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The Importance of The Declaration• Why is the Declaration of Independence such as milestone in

the cause of freedom, despite the failure of the man who wrote it and the men who signed it to apply its principles to everyone?

• The Declaration committed the USA to the fundamental principle of universal equality. Equality became an integral part of American freedom. However, freedom initially was only for white men. Those groups who were denied their freedom used the words of the Declaration to advocate for, and eventually gain their freedom. In the northern states, abolition of slavery began within a few years of the Declaration. Still, for most African Americans true freedom remained elusive until the late 20th century.


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Slavery Divides the Nation • As new states entered the

Union the country increasingly divided between the free states of the North and the slave states of the South.

• By the 1830s a movement to abolish slavery had formed known as abolitionism.


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Slavery is an Affront to Democracy• Abolitionists reminded

Americans that they were failing to live up to the ideas of their founding document – the Declaration of Independence.

• Frederick Douglass specifically addressed this in his famous speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

• “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal…”


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What is the 4th of July to a Slave?


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Abolitionists Advocate Equality• Abolitionists were some of

America’s earliest freedom fighters. Most not only sought an end to slavery; they also advocated equal rights for African Americans. William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass were prominent abolitionists.

• Their efforts antagonized southerners and helped bring about the Civil War.


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The Civil War• By 1861, the division over

slavery had become irreconcilable. The election of a candidate opposed to the expansion of slavery had led to southern secession and then civil war.

• Initially the North fought to restore the Union. By 1863 President Lincoln had made the war also about an end to slavery.


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The Great Emancipator• *********************In Nov. 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in which he forever connected the sacrifices of those who “… paid the last full measure of devotion” to defend freedom on that battlefield to our forefathers who put their lives on the line and “… brought forth on this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”


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The Gettysburg Address• Of course, Lincoln was

referring to the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence which says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”


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Extending Equality to All Americans• Lincoln said that those who

died fighting for the Union gave their lives to preserve democracy and help bring about “a new birth of freedom” by also ending slavery.

• Lincoln stated that the Declaration of Independence also applied to African Americans.

• The idea of universal freedom moved closer to reality.


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Reconstruction• A period known as

Reconstruction followed the end of the Civil War. During this time African American men had their equality and right to vote enshrined into the Constitution with the 14th and 15th Amendments. Republicans in Congress, like Thaddeus Steven and former abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass pushed to expand freedom.


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Jim Crow• Reconstruction lasted only a

little over a decade. The great strides toward universal freedom were reversed and a new system of segregation and discrimination was erected in the South. Even beyond the South, African Americans were often denied their full rights. This period lasted into the 1960s!


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Women Struggle for Equality• It is important to remember

that women, regardless of color were not considered full citizens, too. They were not even guaranteed the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. Women like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul led the movement for women’s freedom.


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Women Struggle for Equality • As early as 1848,

over 300 gathered at Seneca Falls, NY to draw attention to the need for women’s equality and voting rights.


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Still Fighting for Equaity and Justice

• In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was organized. This organization was committed to ending discrimination and segregation.

• The NAACP challenged segregation in the federal courts.


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Key Court Cases• 1954 Thurgood Marshall went

before the U.S. Supreme Court with a case that forever changed education in the United States

• Combination of court cases challenging the constitutionality of segregated public schools

Arguments• Heard over two-year period• Thurgood Marshall provided

research suggesting segregation harmful to students’ self-image

• His research helped influence the Court’s final decision

Neighborhood Schools• Went by name of Brown v. Board of

Education of Topeka, Kansas • NAACP members tried to enroll

children in white neighborhood schools; schools refused to admit the black students, who had to attend black schools farther away

Unanimous Ruling in 1954• Brown v. Board of Education, the

Court ruled the “separate but equal” doctrine in the nation’s public schools unconstitutional and therefore racial segregation in public schools was illegal

Brown v. Board of Education


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Brown v. Bd. Of Education (1954)

• With its decision against segregation in education the Supreme Court struck a blow at Jim Crow and marked a victory for true equality.


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Similar Boycott• 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama• Montgomery bus system required

black passengers to sit in a “colored section” in the back; not allowed to share rows with white passengers

• Row of black passengers to stand so one white passenger could sit

One-Day Boycott• NAACP called for a one-day

Montgomery bus boycott; 90 percent of riders participated

• Black leaders extended the boycott and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)

NAACP Involved• Rosa Parks boarded a city bus and

sat in the first row of the “colored section”; Parks refused give her seat to white passengers

• She was arrested and taken to jail• The NAACP had found its test case

King on Board• Martin Luther King Jr., a 26-year-

old black Baptist minister was chosen to lead the MIA

• An experienced activist, King had gained a reputation as a powerful speaker

Montgomery Bus Boycott


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The struggle for freedom• The modern

civil rights movement, a movement for equality, faced many obstacles. They worked to end Jim Crow.


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President Kennedy Embraces Equality• In June 1963 President

Kennedy proposed a law to ban all segregation and discrimination. If enacted, this law would finally end Jim Crow.

• Two months later several hundred thousand gathered in Washington to lend their support to this bill. Dr. King was the last to speak.


Section 1Dr. King and the Modern Civil Rights Movement

• Dr. King’s speech on Aug.28, 1963 was heavily laced w/references to the Declaration of Independence and to Lincoln.

• Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.


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“Justice delayed is Justice denied.”• But one hundred

years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…


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“I Have a Dream”• In a sense we have come to our

nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.


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“I Have a Dream” • It is obvious today that America

has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt….


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Civil Rights Act• In 1964, President

Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, first proposed by President Kennedy. This law ended Jim Crow!

• In Aug. 1965, Johnson also signed the Voting Rights Act.


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• How is our understanding of equality evolving even at this time (2014)? Are there any Americans who still feel they are not being accorded equal rights?


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*• Gay Americans

believe that they have not achieved full equality. A major cause for them is legal recognition to marry.


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The Quest for Equality Continues• In 2012, President Obama,

America’s first African American President marked another milestone in the evolving understanding of equality when he spoke in favor of according Gay Americans the same legal right to marriage as heterosexual couples.


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*• In June 2013, the Supreme

Court struck down a Federal law that did not accept the legality of gay marriages in those states where it was permitted. This decision was praised by gay rights advocates. Still, the Court did not say that gay marriage should be legal in every state.


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The Struggle continues• The August 2014 police shooting and

death of unarmed 18 year old African American male was the latest in a long list of questionable police shootings of black men. If any groups of people are viewed as suspect because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or political views then justice is being denied. Lack of justice means lack of freedom.

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