In this blog I will discuss the power non-violent protest has on the judicial system and how acts and systems are technically abiding by the law but this doesn’t mean that these systems are correct. I will also then show the power language has on individuals and then on changing laws. I will explore this in African American’s fight for equality in history using, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. Edited by James M. Washington and the Unites States Constitution. We are all entitled to human rights just by being born and this should be respected no matter race or ethnicity you’re identified as.
Before Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans were having their constitutional rights and their human rights striped from them by laws put in front of them to keep them from being equal. In 1870 the constitutions Bill Of Rights was changed to say that all citizens were given the right to vote and this right was not to be taken away because of a person’s race. So why it wasn’t until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act was passed. If it wasn’t for the pressure that Martin Luther King and the faithful nonviolent protesters throughout the Selma March and the Selma March to Montgomery this right would have never been protected. The journey to affirm rights even if already written in the United States Constitution was not easy, police brutality, racism and hate blocked the path. But Dr. King’s non-violent theory expected these hardships and used the media to show the world the hardships his people had to overcome to get their constitutional right protected. Without this pressure put on by the resilient protesters nothing would have changed. This pressure was placed on the president and caused him to push the Voting Rights Act and get it passed in 1965. This act was followed by a great increase of African Americans at the polls.
Laws are put in place for a reason and Dr. King wasn’t a radical when it came down to breaking them, the right to assembly and the freedom of speech which makes protest legal didn’t stop hundreds of arrest. But Dr. King believed that any law that was unjust wasn’t a law at all. These unjust laws he was speaking on were laws that only affected some and not all, and laws that were based on an individual’s moral standing. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a list of rights that should be protected universally, this document was signed by the United Nations in 1948 to help make sure that people’s rights are always protected. Unfortunately this is only a document sadly and his not always followed, as seen in many cases including the rights of African Americans.
I have learned through reading Dr. King and learning about language and human rights that rights are not given easily sometimes you have to fight for them. Many people can adjust themselves to cruelties but through the language of Dr. King he woke individuals up and explained that a change could be made we don’t have to be oppressed or discriminated or humiliated every day of our lives If we stand together things will have to change. This is the power of language, when it can make people feel different when it can raise a person’s spirit, when it can give someone courage that they never knew they had. Language is powerful and this language lead to a change in laws and gave people their human rights they deserved.
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