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I read "Lynching in America by PBS; American Experience." it was very scary in the south in the 19th and 20th century when lynching became very popular by the KKK and other racist hate groups. lynching, and act of terror meant to spread fear among African Americans. Author Richard Wright, who was born near Natchez in southwest Mississippi, knew of two men who were lynched—his step-uncle and the brother of a neighborhood friend. Although the practice of lynching had existed since before slavery, it gained momentum duringReconstruction, when viable black towns sprang up across the South and African Americans began to make political and economic inroads by registering to vote, establishing businesses and running for public office.Many whites—landowners and poor whites—felt threatened by this rise in black prominence.

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I read an article that was entitled "PBS Civil Rights Today," by Alan Jenkins. This article was an interview. The interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006. In this article, you can learn a lot of information, like working towards making equality a reality. There were movements of African-Americans who had to help other groups of people looking for justice in the countries. There was a lot of effect of civil rights back then and a lot today that is impacting us right now by helping the people that stand up for their rights and their lives. The communities are well and we need to work to improve the communities so that we all can feel safe. Alan Jenkins said, " That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases." Now more than ever it is time that the important for Americans to reassess the struggles of inequality and improve that upon us today.

I think all of this information that we got from the article was very important that kids our age should know because we don't realize what we have these days. Should be the same distance from the hospitals and jobs as the people need. It just proves some of the inequalities that we have out in the world. Use as people need to be more fair and kind in the long run. Though many countries have gotten better at all the equal, we are a long way from being equal.

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Eyes on the Prize | Article

Alan Jenkins is the executive director and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization that works to expand opportunity in America through research, communications, and advocacy. His career has taken him to the Ford Foundation as Director of Human Rights; to the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant to the Solicitor General; and to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as Associate Counsel. In his current role he works with a range of social justice groups to expand opportunity in America.

by Alan Jenkins

What is the state of civil and human rights today? We've made a huge amount of progress but we still have a long way to go. There's very little of the kind of formal bigotry and segregation that we saw in Eyes on the Prize, but there's still a lot of discrimination in our society, unfortunately.

Addressing Inequities Today
The modern civil rights movement is working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society. Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Our country hasn't yet fulfilled that promise.

Hurricane Katrina provides a good example. What it revealed is that there's still significant racial inequality and desperate poverty in America. A lot of that springs from discrimination from long ago that concentrated black people in the poorest neighborhoods - the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to flooding, that are farthest from good jobs, schools and hospitals, and the hardest to get out of with transportation in an emergency. So those were the people who were hardest hit when Katrina struck. African American communities were not thought of by our government in the same way as more affluent or white communities.

The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity so that kind of thing doesn't happen again. It's important to determine what's different now compared to the Eyes era. We've got to eradicate the more subtle manifestations of racial bias in our society that go back to those earlier times.

The Movement's Impact
The African American civil rights movement has inspired a lot of other groups that have suffered injustices. One example that we saw recently was the immigrant rights demonstrations around the country. Immigrants' assertion that "we too are America" was inspiring, and very much in the spirit of the civil rights movement. In addition, there's been, since the late Sixties, a powerful Latino civil rights movement, that included the farm workers' movement, and includes organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, patterned on the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. The women's rights movement was inspired in part by the African American civil rights movement. Certainly the immigrant rights movement, and the gay rights movement as well. Those are just a few examples. Dynamic people in those communities have led the movements, but the African American civil rights movement provides a powerful template for activism.

The impact of the civil rights movement has spread throughout the world. I've met with people in India - Dalits, who are the former "untouchable" caste. What's exciting is that Martin Luther Kinglearned nonviolent strategies from Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, so it's kind of a full circle. When I traveled to India I met activists who were singing "We Shall Overcome" - the touchstone song of the American civil rights movement - in Hindi, and talked about how they had gotten inspiration from the American civil rights movement for their own struggle to achieve rights in Indian society. And there are many more examples worldwide.

Improving Our Own Communities
The first thing that people can do to improve things around them is to make sure that we live up to the promise of opportunity in our own lives. That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases. We all carry around biases and stereotypes in our heads, and that's a part of being human. But we all have an opportunity to step outside of them and make sure we're treating people the way we want to be treated.

The second thing is to be part of making our society more equal. That could mean calling up your local TV station and either complementing reporting they're doing, or asking them why they aren't doing more to expose inequality and highlight solutions. Write letters to the editor - including writing to your school newspaper - about how issues of opportunity are playing out in your community and what you can do about it.

The Implicit Association Test on race is an online test that you can take on Harvard University's Web site. It's a fascinating way to see biases you might unknowingly have. The test flashes up images of people from a variety of racial groups, and pairs them with negative and positive words. It's designed to demonstrate that everyone carries around implicit biases to some degree. It's a very interesting test. Of course, there is a difference between the Bull Connors - the hateful racists - and the rest of us, who are people of good will, but we don't always recognize the stereotypes we carry around with us.

What does implicit or subconscious bias mean for police officers who have a split second to make a decision? What does it mean for school admissions officers or others making a decision that affects someone's direction in life? The question for people to ask themselves is, if this person looked different, would I make the same decision?

Civil Rights Today
I think we're at a crossroads now for opportunity. There are some areas where we've made great progress. For example, African American women have made the most progress of any group in college attendance - a remarkable success story. But in many other areas America is in real trouble. Great inequality and discrimination still exist in our school systems, our criminal justice system, and other aspects of our lives. Research shows, for example, the need to address the employment and housing discrimination that still exist. Nearly one out of every four African Americans seeking housing experience discrimination. That's happening today. And yet there's very little written about it - people are really unaware that that's the case. We find similar levels of discrimination in employment statistics.

People interested in finding out more can read a report on our web site called The State of Opportunity in America. It explores how we're doing as a nation in achieving opportunity for all, in terms of equality, economic security, and more.

It's a very important time now for America to reinvest in that struggle for overcoming inequality and discrimination. They are really contrary to our values as a country.

Source: Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006.

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Civil Rights Today | American Experience | PBS

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In 2006, American Expereince spoke to Alan Jenkins about the civil rights movement as it entered the twenty-first century.

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I read an article about "lynching" Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

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The article will be about lynching. Lynching was a public act to scare blacks, and it made it were whites could control them. From 1882 to 1968 and there was over 4,500 deaths from lynching, but there could be more because there was no formal document of this. Mobs of white people would normally use criminal accusations to do lynchings. You may think that this is a terrible crime, but lynchings still happen today.

I feel that lynching should not have ever been a thing. I feel this way because lynching killed many people, and most did not deserve it. Lynching is a particularly heinous crime because they just left black people hanging in trees and killed them basically for sport. Learning about this makes me see the past in a different way. In 2020 Ahmaud Arbery was shot while jogging, but the three white people who did this said he was trespassing, that would be considered a lynching. Lynching should not be happening today and should be left in the past.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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I read the article "Lynching in America", The author says that in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana and many more states, EJI researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans between 1877 and 1950. In 2017 researchers documented racial terror lynchings in other states. They found that the acts of violence was was most common in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. People who participated in lynching were celebrated.

I was surprised that lynching was happening in these states. This article makes me wonder what would have happened if lynching did not happen, because if whites and blacks were treated the same, then lynching would not have happened. I think that what was happening back then is unfair, because if like what i said before, lynching would not have happened.

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Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often in the form of a hanging) for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in every society. My response to this is that lynching is a terrible punishment and should never had been used.

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I read an article entitled civil rights movement by the history newspaper. The civil rights in the 50s and 60s was a big part of what every human being wanting to get equal rights like fair jobs and bathroom rights. This was big with the black and whites where they had a bathroom for whites and a bathroom for blacks. During this time there were lots of fights breaking out and there was also lots of killing going on. For example right before the 1968 president voting there was about 2,000 killed or injured black people because white people which at the time were in the KKK didn't want black people voting in the election This fighting span lasted for about 2 decades. Then eventually the black people gained equal rights. in the late 60s. The presidents were passing laws for the equal rights like the first one when he signed the first equal right law in 1957. I was instantly hocked to this writing because it had lots of different information in the article which gave me enough information to let me write this summary.

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I read a web paige cite called "The Cilvil Rights Movement" it talks about the movement for equal rights. It talks about main points that happened to the African Americans. Like how Rosa parks sat in the front of the bus And was arrested because she refused to give her seat to a white woman. It also talks about the little rock integrigation crisis which was how 9 black students tried to attend a school in Little Rock, Arkansas then the govenor order National Guards to surround the building and harras black students and prevent them from entering the building. I was suprised they did this to people because of their color a lot of the things they did were bad and hard to think about. This article helps me understand how bad racism was back then.

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im proving the lives and rights of the lgbtq. my response it's bad for LGBTQ for them fighting for their right to love the people they like. To reverse some of the most egregious and far-reaching harms perpetrated by the Trump administration, there are a number of overarching, multiagency actions that the Biden administration should execute to provide meaningful protections for LGBTQ people. But they are the way they are so they have the best way to have the best chance to live their best lives.

my resouse to the problem for the LGBTQ people are they are having a hard time to get the ability to do the things they want and have the protection they need from the people that don't like LGBTQ poeple so they have the best for them.

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Improving the Lives and Rights of LGBTQ People in America

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The incoming Biden administration has stated its commitment to advancing LGBTQ equality, which will require undoing the harms caused during the last four years and by generations of discrimination, as well as proactively championing a progressive agenda.

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I read "Lynching: mob violence" about the lynchings and the main reasons on why they accord.

Summary ¶ - The lynchings here mostly caused by the whites feeling superior than the blacks, along with the feelings they had for the blacks becoming independent and fighting against segregation.

Response ¶ - This was surprising to me because of the fact that the whites viewed as property and a source of income and when they became independent it really angered people.

Source material - "Lynching: mob violence" written by Geoffrey Abbott

Lynching, a form of violence in which a mob, under the pretext of administering justice without trial, executes a presumed offender, often after inflicting torture and corporal mutilation. The term lynch law refers to a self-constituted court that imposes sentence on a person without due process of law. Both terms are derived from the name of Charles Lynch (1736–96), a Virginia planter and justice of the peace who, during the American Revolution, headed an irregular court formed to punish loyalists.

Historically, the fehmic courts of medieval Germany imposed some punishments that involved lynching, as did the Halifax gibbet law (execution of those guilty of theft valued over a specific amount) and Cowper justice (trial after execution) in the border districts of England. Resembling these cases were the Santa Hermandad constabulary in medieval Spain and pogroms directed against Jews in Russia and Poland, although in these cases there was support from legally constituted authorities.

lynching: Rubin Stacy

The body of Rubin Stacy hanging from a tree in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, July 19, 1935. He was lynched by a mob for allegedly attacking a white woman.(more)

Vigilante justice has been practiced in many countries under unsettled conditions whenever informally organized groups have attempted to supplement or replace legal procedure or to fill the void where institutional justice did not yet exist. Such conditions commonly give rise to acts of genocide. Statistics of reported lynching in the United States indicate that, between 1882 and 1951, 4,730 persons were lynched, of whom 1,293 were white and 3,437 were black. Lynching continued to be associated with U.S. racial unrest during the 1950s and ’60s, when civil rights workers and advocates were threatened and in some cases killed by mobs.

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I read a article by Alan Jenkins

Which was about what the state of civil and human rights today?

Then it talked Addressing Inequities Today which is the modern civil rights movement, it's working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society. Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential.

The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity so that kind of thing doesn't happen again. It's important to determine what's different now compared to the Eyes era.

Summary ¶ I was instantly hooked by this because it talked about how the civil rights are today and how it was long ago.

My response is that the civil rights today is a lot better then it was years ago and i think that the civil rights would continue to grow better.

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I read an article titled "Lynching" by Digital History which was a whole long paper all about lynchings. In this paper I learned lynchings didn't just happen in the south they happen in the north too. Between 1882 and 1930 there were around 2,828 people lynched in the south, 585 in the west and 260 in the midwest. A majority of the lynchings were in the south. There was a lot of cruel people then. There still are but is they lynched someone they would be punished unlike the people back then. The would be people coming from all over just to watch the lynching of different raced people. Another thing I found interesting was that they weren't just black people that got lynched there were Italian, Chinese or even Jewish people. There were tickets cold to lynchings crowds of about 15,000 would come to watch. Some people believe that the number of lynchings went up by a lot because of the souths cotton economy going downhill.

This made me look at the past in a whole different view. I knew that there were beatings to the blacks that didn't behave correctly but to be hung started on fire then to have your womb cut open and you and your baby to be left there to suffer is put plain awful and disgusting. Some people believe that there was a lynching recently on the news. The George Floyd incident could be considered a lynching because he was pinned on the ground with a knee to his throat for some 3 minutes.

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History of Lynchings By:Cadence Petersen

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History of Lynchings By:Cadence Petersen

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I read an article entitled "History of Lynching in America," by the NAACP which is an informative text created in 2023. This article taught me what lynchings are and how they were back then. Lynching was the act of killing someone publicly for the entertainment of people, but also a part of segregation. It was usually done by mobs of people and sometimes police were even involved. Most of the time they hung them but sometimes they would use other torture forms, such as burning their victim alive. Most of the lynchings included criminal accusation, arrest, torture, and then the murder of one. The white people in the 19th and 20th centuries used these lynchings as a way to control black people and it was most common in the south, and according to the NAACP there were a total of 4,743 lynchings across the country. The white people would use horrible criminal acts, that most times were false or didn’t even happen, to justify the lynching of their victim, so they had a reason to go through with the lynching.

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Have immigrants been treated the same as everyone else? Civil Rights Today. By: Liv

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Have immigrants been treated the same as everyone else? Civil Rights Today. By: Liv

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I read an article called "Understanding the Immigration Process," by Shannon Schumacher, September 17, 2023. Through this article, I learned that all immigrates should have the right to freedom of speech, their right to be treated fairly, the right to privacy, the basic rights to be U.S. citizens today. But have they really been treated that way? Many of the immigrants can't afford basic needs such as food and home. 38% of blacks/immigrates have been treated badly by the police. People have been saying bad thins to the immigrants that come. For example they say "go back to your country" making them not feel safe. Even though America is supposed to be free. Some people have been insulted for speaking another language. Immigrants have said that they don't want to talk to the police because they don't want to bring their family/social status into it. The English language is hard to understand and people who don't know how to speak it have it difficult to communicate. People who don't understand English are more likely to report discrimination than people who do understand it.

I agree with Shannon Schumacher on how Immigrants should have the same rights as people born in the U.S. After reading this article made me think: why are people treating them different? What did they do? The U.S. has a general law of making everyone free and have the same rights no matter who they are. Because of this article, I would like to continue to read more about the civil rights today and what everyone is doing to the immigrants. I didn't realize how people are treating the immigrants today. They need to put in laws discontinue this situation.

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Executive Summary

The Survey of Immigrants, conducted by KFF in partnership with the Los Angeles Times during Spring 2023, examines the diversity of the U.S. immigrant experience. It is the largest and most representative survey of immigrants living in the U.S. to date. With its sample size of 3,358 immigrant adults, the survey provides a deep understanding of immigrant experiences, reflecting their varied countries of origin and histories, citizenship and immigration statuses, racial and ethnic identities, and social and economic circumstances. KFF also conducted focus groups with immigrants from an array of backgrounds, which expand upon information from the survey (see Methodology for more details).

This report provides an overview of immigrants' reasons for coming to the U.S.; their successes and challenges; their experiences at work, in their communities, in health care settings, and at home; as well as their outlook on the future. Recognizing the diversity within the immigrant population, the report examines variations in the experiences of different groups of immigrants, including by immigration status, income, race and ethnicity, English proficiency, and other factors. Given that this report includes a focus on experiences with discrimination and unfair treatment, data by race and ethnicity are often shown rather than by country of birth. A companion report provides information on immigrants' health coverage, access to, and use of care, and further reports will provide additional details for other subgroups within the immigrant population, including more data by country of origin.

Key takeaways from this report include:

Most immigrants - regardless of where they came from or how long they've been in the U.S. - say they came to the U.S. for more opportunities for themselves and their children. The predominant reasons immigrants say they came to the U.S. are for better work and educational opportunities, a better future for their children, and more rights and freedoms. Smaller but still sizeable shares cite other factors such as joining family members or escaping unsafe or violent conditions.

Overall, a majority of immigrants say their financial situation (78%), educational opportunities (79%), employment situation (75%), and safety (65%) are better as a result of moving to the U.S. A large majority (77%) say their own standard of living is better than that of their parents, higher than the share of U.S.-born adults who say the same (51%),and most (60%) believe their children's standard of living will be better than theirs is now. Three in four immigrants say they would choose to come to the U.S. again if given the chance, and six in ten say they plan to stay in the U.S. However, about one in five (19%) say they want to move back to the country they were born in or to another country, while an additional one in five (21%) say they are not sure.

Despite an improved situation relative to their countries of birth, many immigrants report facing serious challenges, including high levels of workplace and other discrimination, difficulties making ends meet, and confusion and fears related to U.S. immigration laws and policies. These challenges are more pronounced among some groups of immigrants, including those who live in lower-income households, Black and Hispanic immigrants, those who are likely undocumented, and those with limited English proficiency. Given the intersectional nature of these factors, some immigrants face compounding challenges across them.

Most immigrants are employed, and about half of all working immigrants say they have experienced discrimination in the workplace, such as being given less pay or fewer opportunities for advancement than people born in the U.S., not being paid for all their hours worked, or being threatened or harassed. In addition, about a quarter of all immigrants, rising to three in ten of those with college degrees, say they are overqualified for their jobs, a potential indication that they had to take a step back in their careers when coming to the U.S. or lacked career advancement opportunities in the U.S.

About a third (34%) of immigrants say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English since moving to the U.S., and a similar share (33%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from." About four in ten (38%) immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in a store or restaurant, in interactions with the police, or when buying or renting a home. Some immigrants also report being treated unfairly in health care settings. Among immigrants who have received health care in the U.S., one in four say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a doctor or other health care provider because of their racial or ethnic background, their accent or how well they speak English, or their insurance status or ability to pay for care.

Immigrants who are Black or Hispanic report disproportionate levels of discrimination at work, in their communities, and in health care settings. Over half of employed Black (56%) and Hispanic (55%) immigrants say they have faced discrimination at work, and roughly half of college-educated Black (53%) and Hispanic (46%) immigrant workers say they are overqualified for their jobs. Nearly four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have been treated unfairly by the police and more than four in ten (45%) say they have been told to "go back to where you came from." In addition, nearly four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a health care provider. Among Hispanic immigrants, four in ten (42%) say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English.

Even with high levels of employment, one third of immigrants report problems affording basic needs like food, housing, and health care. This share rises to four in ten among parents and about half of immigrants living in lower income households (those with annual incomes under $40,000). In addition, one in four lower income immigrants say they have difficulty paying their bills each month, while an additional 47% say they are "just able to pay their bills each month."

Among likely undocumented immigrants, seven in ten say they worry they or a family member may be detained or deported, and four in ten say they have avoided things such as talking to the police, applying for a job, or traveling because they didn't want to draw attention to their or a family member's immigration status. However, these concerns are not limited to those who are likely undocumented. Among all immigrants regardless of their own immigration status, nearly half (45%) say they don't have enough information to understand how U.S. immigration laws affect them and their families, and one in four (26%) say they worry they or a family member could be detained or deported. Confusion and lack of information extend to public charge rules. About three quarters of all immigrants, rising to nine in ten among likely undocumented immigrants, say they are not sure whether use of public assistance for food, housing, or health care can affect an immigrant's ability to get a green card or incorrectly believe that use of this assistance will negatively affect the ability to get a green card.

About half of all immigrants have limited English proficiency, and about half among this group say they have faced language barriers in a variety of settings and interactions. About half (53%) of immigrants with limited English proficiency say that difficulty speaking or understanding English has ever made it hard for them to do at least one of the following: get health care services (31%); receive services in stores or restaurants (30%); get or keep a job (29%); apply for government financial help with food, housing, or health coverage (25%); report a crime or get help from the police (22%). In addition, one-quarter of parents with limited English proficiency say they have had difficulty communicating with their children's school (24%). Working immigrants with limited English proficiency also are more likely to report workplace discrimination compared to those who speak English very well (55% vs. 41%).

Who Are U.S. Immigrants?
The KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants is a probability-based survey that is representative of the adult immigrant population in the U.S. based on known demographic data from federal surveys (see Methodology for more information on sampling and weighting). For the purposes of this project, immigrant adults are defined as individuals ages 18 and over who live in the U.S. but were born outside the U.S. or its territories.

According to 2021 federal data, immigrants make up 16% of the U.S. adult population (ages 18+). About four in ten immigrant adults identify as Hispanic (44%), over a quarter are Asian (27%), and smaller shares are White (17%), Black (8%), or report multiple races (3%). The top six countries of origin among adult immigrants in the U.S. are Mexico (24%), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (5%), El Salvador (3%), and Vietnam (3%) although immigrants hail from countries across the world.

The immigrant adult population largely mirrors the U.S.-born adult population in terms of gender. While similar shares of U.S.-born and immigrant adults have a college degree, immigrant adults are substantially more likely than U.S.-born adults to have less than a high school education. About four in ten (40%) immigrants are parents of a child under 18 living in their household, and a quarter (25%) of children in the U.S. have an immigrant parent.

Slightly less than half (47%) of immigrant adults report having limited English proficiency, meaning they speak English less than very well. Regardless of ability to speak English, a large majority (83%) of immigrants say they speak a language other than English at home, including about four in ten (43%) who speak Spanish at home.

A majority (55%) of U.S. adult immigrants are naturalized citizens. The remaining share are noncitizens, including lawfully present and undocumented immigrants. KFF analysis based on federal data estimates that 60% of noncitizens are lawfully present and 40% are undocumented.

See Appendix Table 1 for a table of key demographics about the U.S. adult immigrant population compared to the U.S.-born adult population.
Key Terms Used In This Report
Limited English Proficiency: Immigrants are classified as having Limited English Proficiency if they self-identify as speaking English less than "very well."

Immigration Status: Immigrants are classified by their self-reported immigration status as follows:

Naturalized Citizen: Immigrants who said they are a U.S. citizen.

Green Card or Valid Visa: Immigrants who said they are not a U.S. citizen, but currently have a green card (lawful permanent status) or a valid work or student visa.

Likely Undocumented Immigrant: Immigrants who said they are not a U.S. citizen and do not currently have a green card (lawful permanent status) or a valid work or student visa. These immigrants are classified as "likely undocumented" since they have not affirmatively identified themselves as undocumented.

Race and Ethnicity: Data are reported for four racial and ethnic categories: Hispanic, Black, Asian, and White based on respondents' self-reported racial and ethnic identity. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race but are categorized as Hispanic for this analysis; other groups are non-Hispanic. Results for individuals in other groups are included in the total but not shown separately due to sample size restrictions. Given that this report includes a focus on experiences with discrimination and unfair treatment, we often show data by race and ethnicity rather than country of birth. Given variation of experiences within these broad racial and ethnic categories, further reports will provide additional details for subgroups within racial and ethnic groups, including more data by country of origin.

Educational Attainment: These data are based on the highest level of education completed in the U.S. and/or in other countries as self-reported by the respondent. The response categories offered were: did not graduate high school, high school graduate with a diploma, some college (including an associate degree), university degree (bachelor's degree), and post-graduate degree (such as Master's, PhD, MD, JD).

Country of Birth: "Country of birth" is classified based on respondents' answer to the question "In what country were you born?" In some cases, countries are grouped into larger regions. See Appendix Table 2 for a list of regional groupings.

Why Do Immigrants Come to The U.S. And How Do They Feel About Their Life in the U.S.?

Immigrants cite both push and pull factors as reasons for coming to the U.S. For most immigrants, their major reasons for coming to the U.S. are aspirational, such as seeking better economic and job opportunities (75% say this is a major reason they came to the U.S.), a better future for their children (68%), and for better educational opportunities (62%). Half of immigrants say a major reason they or their family came to the U.S. was to have more rights and freedoms, including about three-quarters of immigrants from Central America (73%). Smaller but sizeable shares say other factors such as joining family members (42%) or escaping unsafe or violent conditions (31%) were major reasons they came. The share who cites escaping unsafe conditions as a major reason for coming to the U.S. rises to about half of likely undocumented immigrants (51%) and about six in ten (59%) immigrants from Central America.
In Their Own Words: Reasons for Coming to the U.S. from Focus Group Participants Stories focus group participants told of why they came to the U.S. reflect the survey responses. While many pointed to economic and educational opportunities, some described leaving harsh economic and unsafe conditions in their home countries.
"I came to the U.S. hoping that my children will have better educational opportunity." - 58-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in California

"[My husband] came here, and I followed him. So, he came, and I came with the kids afterwards...so we could have a better life. It's not easy...we wanted to have...better opportunities for our children, for ourselves." - 46-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"The thing is that there are more opportunities, and the standard of living is much better. We can make ends meet even through manual labor. That is not possible in Vietnam." - 33-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in Texas

"Then, my mom had to make a decision because the gangs took control of her place. They started asking for rent, extorting her life. If she didn't pay the extortion, the rent, they were going to take me, or my siblings, or her. ...since I was the oldest, she brought me, making the sacrifice of leaving behind my two siblings." - 25-year-old Salvadorian immigrant man in California

"Actually, it wasn't my decision to come. I left when I was 13 years old, fleeing from my country because I had a death threat, along with my eight-year-old sister. I didn't want to come." - 20-year-old Honduran immigrant woman in California

"Because of the earthquake, you know, I lost my house, and I wanted to go to a country with more opportunities and I came here." - 30-year-old Haitian immigrant man in Florida

Most immigrants say moving to the U.S. has provided them more opportunities and improved their quality of life. When the survey asked immigrants to describe in their own words the best thing that has come from moving to the U.S., many similar themes arise: better opportunities, a better life in general, or a better future for their children are top mentions, as are education and work opportunities.
In Their Own Words: The Best Thing That Has Come From Moving To The U.S. In a few words, what is the best thing that has come from you moving to the U.S.?
"Educational opportunities, economic opportunities, political and human rights, housing, food and basic needs, neighborhood safety, lower crime rates"- 28 year old Mexican immigrant woman in Nebraska

"Best education for my kids. Professional job. Healthy environment. Good system. The opportunities everywhere!" - 67-year-old Nepalese immigrant man in Maryland

"Better job, education, and economic opportunities" - 48-year-old Indian immigrant woman in North Carolina

"Education and improved quality of life in terms of obtaining basic needs" - 39-year-old Dominican immigrant woman in New Jersey

"Stability, freedom, better finance[s], having the opportunity to have a family" - 32-year-old Venezuelan immigrant man in New York

"Educational and employment opportunities for myself and my children" - 60-year-old Filipino immigrant woman in California

Most immigrants feel that moving to the U.S. has made them better off in terms of educational opportunities (79%), their financial situation (78%), their employment situation (75%), and their safety (65%). Safety stands out as an area where somewhat fewer -though still a majority-immigrants say they're better off, particularly among White and Asian immigrants. A bare majority (54%) of Asian immigrants and fewer than half (42%) of White immigrants say their safety is better as a result of moving to the U.S., while about one in five in both groups (17% of Asian immigrants and 21% of White immigrants) say they are less safe as a result of coming to the U.S.
In Their Own Words: Safety Concerns In The U.S. From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, some participants pointed to concerns about guns, drugs, and safety in the U.S., particularly in their children's schools.
"Sometimes when you see on the television and they're talking about shooting and these types of things. In Ghana we don't have that-it's safe, you walk around, you're free." - 38-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"I take my kids to school because, really, you have to go to school. But if I could have them at home and homeschool them, I'd do it. I wouldn't let them go because I don't feel safe anymore." - 51-year-old Salvadorian immigrant man in California

"I'm from Mexico, and over there, you have to struggle to get a gun. Here, you can buy a gun like you're buying candy at Walmart or somewhere." - 37-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Texas

"Because in my children's school, there are a lot of drugs found in its restrooms. ...There is so much temptation for drugs here. It is not that safe." - 49-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

Most immigrants say they are better off compared with their parents at their age, and most are optimistic about their children's future. When asked about their standard of living, three quarters (77%) of immigrants say their standard of living is better than their parents' was at their age. This is substantially higher than the share of U.S.-born adults who say the same (51%). Many expect an even better future for their children. Six in ten immigrants believe their children's standard of living will be better than theirs is now, with much smaller shares saying they think it will be worse (13%) or about the same (17%). Most immigrant parents also have positive feelings about the education their children are receiving. About three in four (73%) immigrant parents rate their child's school as either "excellent" (35%) or "good" (38%), with a further one-sixth (17%) saying the school is "fair," and 3% give it a "poor" rating.
In Their Own Words: Hopes For Their Children's Future From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, many participants described hopes and dreams for their children's futures, which often center on improved educational and job opportunities. Some pointed to sacrifices they were making in their own lives for the future benefit of the children.
"I am old, so I came here for my children. That is the thing- We must pay dearly for it when we first came here, but since then, we have seen that life here is wonderful." - 59-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in California

"I want my daughter to achieve what I couldn't...I want her to be better, so she doesn't have to go through what I went through" - 32-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

"...I will not change anything for my kids or for myself. I think it didn't work out like I expected to do, but I don't regret it because my kids have the better chance to have a better education system." - 42-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in California

"These children, they were born there; they have the opportunity; they get the opportunity, they go to school for free; they get food when they get food; they don't have these problems. I can say yes, their lives are better than before the life I had." - 48-year-old Haitian immigrant woman in Florida

How Are Immigrants Faring Economically?

Like many U.S. adults overall, immigrants' biggest concerns relate to making ends meet: the economy, paying bills, and other financial concerns. When asked in the survey to name the biggest concern facing them and their families in their own words, about one-third of immigrants gave answers related to financial stability or other economic concerns. No other concern rose to the level of financial concerns, though other common concerns mentioned include health and medical issues, safety, work and employment issues, and immigration status.
In Their Own Words: Biggest Concerns Facing Immigrant Families Are Economic In a few words, what is the biggest concern facing you and your family right now?
"Low income, hard to survive as day to day cost of living is going up" - 65 year old Colombian immigrant man in Texas

"There are a lot of expenses. Groceries and gas prices are at a high price. It gets overwhelming with all the bills and trying to save money in this economy right now." - 50-year-old Pakistani immigrant man in California

"High prices for rents and new homes" - 55-year-old Congolese immigrant man in Florida

"Retirement- will I need to keep working until I die?" - 64-year-old Dutch immigrant man in Colorado

"Biggest concern is with the inflation. It's hard to keep up with buying groceries, gas paying the bills paying the mortgage and trying to live paycheck to paycheck worrying about if you're gonna be able to afford paying the next bill." - 35-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Nevada

"The house payment. The interest. Everything is really expensive. The food and the university for my son." - 51-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

One in three immigrants report difficulty paying for basic needs. About one in three immigrants (34%) say their household has fallen behind in paying for at least one of the following necessities in the past 12 months: utilities or other bills (22%), health care (20%), food (17%), or housing (17%). The share who reports problems paying for these necessities rises to about half among immigrants who have annual household incomes of less than $40,000 (47%). The shares who report facing these financial challenges are also larger among immigrants who are likely undocumented (51%), Black (50%), or Hispanic (43%), largely because they are more likely to be low income. Additionally, four in ten immigrant parents report problems paying for basic needs.

Beyond having trouble affording basic needs, a sizeable share of immigrants report they are just able to or have difficulties paying monthly bills. Nearly half (47%) of immigrants overall say they can pay their monthly bills and have money left over each month, while four in ten (37%) say they are just able to pay their bills and about one in six (15%) say they have difficulty paying their bills each month. Affordability of monthly bills varies widely by income as well as race and ethnicity. For example, only about a quarter (27%) of lower income immigrants say they have money left over after paying monthly bills compared with eight in ten (80%) of those with at least $90,000 in annual income. About six in ten immigrants who are White or Asian say they have money left over after paying their bills each month compared with four in ten Hispanic immigrants and one-third (32%) of Black immigrants, reflecting lower incomes among these groups.

Despite these financial struggles, close to half of immigrants say they send money to relatives or friends in their country of birth at least occasionally. Overall, about one in three (35%) immigrants say they send money occasionally or when they are able. Much smaller shares report sending either small (8%) or large (2%) shares of money on a regular basis, and overall, most immigrants (55%) do not send money to relatives or family outside the U.S.

Similar shares of immigrants report sending money to their birth country regardless of their own financial struggles. About half (49%) of those who have difficulty paying their bills each month say they send money at least occasionally, as do 44% of those who say they just pay their bills and the same share of those who have money left over after paying monthly bills. Two-thirds (65%) of Black immigrants say they send money to their birth country at least occasionally, while about half (52%) of Hispanic immigrants and four in ten Asian immigrants (42%) report sending money. A much smaller share (24%) of White immigrants say they send money to the country where they were born.

What Are Immigrants' Experiences In The Workplace?

Two-thirds of immigrants say they are currently employed, including nearly seven in ten of those under age 30, about three quarters of those between the ages of 30-64, and a quarter of those ages 65 and over. The remaining third include a mix of students, retirees, homemakers, and few (6%) unemployed immigrants. A quarter of working immigrants say they are self-employed or the owner of a business, rising to one-third (34%) of White working immigrants and nearly three in ten (27%) Hispanic working immigrants. Jobs in construction, sales, health care, and production are the most commonly reported jobs among working immigrants. KFF analysis of federal data shows that immigrants are more likely to be employed in construction, agricultural, and service jobs than are U.S.-born citizen workers.

About a quarter of working immigrants feel they are overqualified for their job, rising to half of college-educated Black and Hispanic immigrants. A majority of working immigrants overall (68%) say they have the appropriate level of education and skills for their job, while about a quarter (27%) say they are overqualified, having more education and skills than the job requires. Just 4% say they are underqualified, having less education and skills than their job requires. In an indication that some immigrants are unable to obtain the same types of roles they were educated and trained for in the countries they came from, the share who feel overqualified for their current job rises to 31% among immigrants with college degrees. It is even higher among college-educated Black (53%) and Hispanic (46%) immigrants.
In Their Own Words: Work Experiences From Focus Group Participants
In focus groups, many immigrants expressed a desire to work and willingness to work in industries like construction, agriculture, and the service sector, which are often physically demanding. Some also described taking jobs that required less skills and education compared to those they held in their country of birth.

"We are the ones that work on the farms. We are the ones that cannot call out. We are the ones that even if our kids are sick, we can't call our boss and say I can't make it to work." - 38-year-old Nigerian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"Yes, we have to put our effort in. It is more demanding. My hands and feet are sore. In exchange, I have a satisfactory level of income." - 49-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"...in Mexico, I was a preschool teacher. Being undocumented, obviously, you can't work in the area you studied in, so now, I do cleaning." - 36-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in Texas

"I used to work a white-collar job, now I do manual labor. My major used to hurt my mind, now it's my arms and legs." - 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"My job entails picking up trash and cleaning toilets. I don't like doing that. Who likes cleaning toilets? Who likes picking up other people's trash, right? I don't like it, but I'm in this job out of necessity." - 20-year-old Honduran immigrant woman in California

"I only had [one] job back in Vietnam. Here I need to do four: a nanny, a maid, a house cleaner and a main job." - 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in Texas

"The work in the field is hard. When it's hot out, it gets up to 100 or 104. People work with grapes, so they pick the grapes. They work in the sun. There's no air.... Snakes come out. Whatever comes out, you just keep picking with the machine. Snakes, mice, whatever. So, it's hard. It's hard." - 32-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

Overall, about half of employed immigrants report working jobs that pay them by the hour (52%), one third say they are paid by salary (32%), and 15% report being paid by the job. However, these shares vary by income, immigration status, educational attainment, and race and ethnicity. Compared to immigrants with higher incomes, immigrants with lower incomes are more likely to be paid by the hour (63% of immigrants with annual household incomes of less than $40,000) or by the job (24%) than receive a salary (13%). Immigrants who are likely undocumented (30%) are about twice as likely as those with a green card or visa (14%) or naturalized citizens (12%) to report being paid by the job, and about half as likely to report being paid by salary (17%, 32%, and 36%, respectively). Immigrants with a college degree are more than three times as likely as those without a college degree to hold salaried jobs, (57% vs. 16%). Black and Hispanic immigrants are more likely to report working hourly jobs (69% and 60% respectively) than their White (42%) and Asian (40%) counterparts. Conversely, among those who are employed, almost half of Asian immigrants and more than four in ten White immigrants report being paid by salary compared with a quarter or fewer Black and Hispanic immigrants.

About half of working immigrants report experiencing discrimination at work. About half (47%) of all working immigrants say they have ever been treated differently or unfairly at work in at least one of five ways asked about on the survey, most commonly being given fewer opportunities for advancement (32%) and being paid less (29%) compared to people born in the U.S. About one in five working immigrants say they have not been paid for all their hours or overtime (22%) or have been given undesirable shifts or less control over their work hours than someone born in the U.S. doing the same job (17%). About one in ten (12%) say they have been harassed or threatened by someone in their workplace because they are an immigrant.

Highlighting the intersectional impacts of race, ethnicity, and immigration status, reports of workplace discrimination are higher among immigrant workers of color and likely undocumented immigrants. Majorities of Black (56%) and Hispanic (55%) immigrant workers report experiencing at least one form of workplace discrimination asked about. More than four in ten (44%) Asian immigrant workers also report experiencing workplace discrimination compared to three in ten (31%) White immigrant workers. About two-thirds (68%) of likely undocumented working immigrants report experiencing at least one form of unfair treatment in the workplace, with about half of this group saying they have been paid less or had fewer opportunities for advancement than people born in the U.S. for doing the same job. Undocumented immigrant workers often face even greater employment challenges due to lack of work authorization, which increases risk of potential workplace abuses, violations of wage and hour laws, and poor working as well as living conditions.

Limited English proficiency is also associated with higher levels of reported workplace discrimination. A majority (55%) of working immigrants who speak English less than very well (rising to 61% of Hispanic immigrants with limited English proficiency) report experiencing at least one form of workplace discrimination. In particular, immigrants with limited English proficiency are more likely than those who are English proficient to say they were given fewer opportunities for promotions or raises (38% vs. 27%) or were paid less than people born in the U.S. for doing the same job (34% vs. 24%).

Do Immigrants Feel Welcome In The U.S.?

Most immigrants feel welcome in their neighborhoods. Overall, two-thirds of immigrants say most people in their neighborhoods are welcoming to immigrants. Just 7% say people in their neighborhood are not welcoming, while one in four say they are "not sure" whether immigrants are welcome in their neighborhood. When it comes to the treatment of immigrants in the state in which they live, about six in ten immigrants say they feel people in their state are welcoming to immigrants, but 15% say their state is not welcoming and another one in four say they are "not sure." When asked about whether they think most people are welcoming to immigrants outside of the state in which they live, about half (48%) of immigrants say they are "not sure" about this, which could reflect lack of experiences in other places.

Immigrants in Texas are much less likely than those in California to feel their state is welcoming to immigrants. Immigrants living in California and Texas, the two most populous states for immigrants, are about equally likely to say immigrants are welcome in their neighborhood. However, immigrants living in California are about 30 percentage points more likely than are immigrants living in Texas to say they feel people in their state are welcoming to immigrants (70% vs. 39%). Further, immigrants in Texas are more than three times as likely as those in California to say they feel their state is not welcoming to immigrants (31% vs. 8%).

What Are Immigrants' Experiences With Discrimination And Unfair Treatment In The Community?

Despite feeling welcome in their neighborhoods, many immigrants report experiencing discrimination and unfair treatment in social and police interactions. About four in ten (38%) immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in at least one of the following places: in a store or restaurant (27%), in interactions with the police (21%), or when buying or renting a home (17%). In addition, about a third (34%) of immigrants say that since moving to the U.S., they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English, and a similar share (33%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from."

Reports of discrimination and unfair treatment are more prevalent among people of color compared to White immigrants, illustrating the combined impacts of racism and anti-immigrant discrimination. For example, about one-third of immigrants who are Black (35%) or Hispanic (31%) and about a quarter (27%) of Asian immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in a store or restaurant, all higher than the share among White immigrants (16%). Notably, four in ten (38%) Black immigrants say they have ever received worse treatment than people born in the U.S. in interactions with the police, and almost half (45%) say they have been told they should "go back to where you came from." Among Hispanic immigrants, about four in ten (42%) say they have been criticized or insulted for speaking a language other than English.
In Their Own Words: Experiences With Discrimination In The Community From Focus Group Participants In focus groups, many immigrants shared their experiences with discrimination in the community.
"Sometimes, when you talk, the way some people will laugh. They'll laugh at you, you say one word, they'll be laughing, laughing, laughing. ...I'm so very ashamed. I'm so ashamed, so you don't want to talk." - 46-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"I speak English, but obviously, I don't speak it fluently. I have my accent, and you can tell that I'm Mexican. I've seen people make faces at me or whatnot." - 37-year-old Mexican immigrant man in Texas

"We have our business around the corner. I left the house one day to go pick up my daughter, and my husband called me. There was a White guy yelling at my husband 'Get out of my country.' I said, 'Tell him that it's your country, too.'" - 36-year-old Mexican immigrant woman in California

"The guy was like...you guys should go back to your country. He used different words for us. Then he called the cops, and when the cops came, they didn't listen to us. I was like, this is unfair. You could have listened to both sides." - 38-year-old Nigerian immigrant woman in New Jersey

"But my son when he first came here, he did not know English. When he went to school, his classmates said, 'You do not study well, you should go back to your country.'" - 54-year-old Vietnamese immigrant woman in California

One in four immigrants report being treated unfairly by a health care provider. In addition to discrimination at work and in community settings, a sizeable share of immigrants say they have been treated unfairly by a doctor or health care provider since coming to the U.S. Overall, among immigrants who have received health care in the U.S., one in four (rising to nearly four in ten Black immigrants) say they have been treated differently or unfairly by a doctor or other health care provider because of their racial or ethnic background, their accent or how well they speak English, or their insurance status or ability to pay for care. For more details about immigrants' health and health care experiences, read the companion report here.

What Language Barriers Do Immigrants With Limited English Proficiency Face?

Over half of immigrants with limited English proficiency report language barriers in a variety of settings and interactions. Overall, about half of all immigrants have limited English proficiency, meaning they speak English less than very well. Among this group, about half (53%) say that difficulty speaking or understanding English has ever made it hard for them to do at least one of the following: receive services in stores or restaurants (30%); get health care services (31%); get or keep a job (29%); apply for government assistance with food, housing, or health coverage (25%); or get help from the police (22%).

Language barriers are amplified among those with lower levels of educational attainment as well as those with lower incomes. Among immigrants with limited English proficiency, those who do not have a college degree are more likely to report experiencing at least one of these difficulties than those who have a college degree (57% vs. 39%). Similarly, lower income immigrants (household incomes less than $40,000) with limited English proficiency are more likely to report facing language barriers compared to their counterparts with incomes of $90,000 or more (61% vs. 38%).

Immigrant parents with limited English proficiency also face challenges communicating with their children's school or teacher. Among immigrant parents with limited English proficiency (52% of all immigrant parents), about one in four (24%) say difficulty speaking or understanding English has made it hard for them to communicate with their child's school or teacher.

How Do Confusion And Worries About Immigration Laws And Status Affect Immigrants' Daily Lives?

About seven in ten (69%) immigrants who are likely undocumented worry they or a family member may be detained or deported. However, worries about detention or deportation are not limited to those who are likely undocumented. About one in three immigrants who have a green card or other valid visa say they worry about this, as do about one in ten (12%) immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Some immigrants report avoiding certain activities due to concerns about immigration status. Fourteen percent of immigrants overall, rising to 42% of those who are likely undocumented, say they have avoided things such as talking to the police, applying for a job, or traveling because they didn't want to draw attention to their or a family member's immigration status. In addition, 8% of all immigrants say they have avoided applying for a government program that helps pay for food, housing, or health care because of concerns about immigration status, including 27% of those who are likely undocumented.

More than four in ten (45%) immigrants overall say they don't have enough information about U.S. immigration policy to understand how it affects them and their family. Lack of immigration-related knowledge is strongly related to one's immigration status. Nearly seven in ten (69%) immigrants who are likely undocumented say they don't have enough information, while immigrants with a valid green card or visa are split, with one half saying they have enough information and the other half saying they do not. Being a naturalized U.S. citizen doesn't completely diminish immigrants' confusion about U.S. immigration policy, as nearly four in ten (39%) immigrants who are naturalized citizens also say they don't have enough information. Beyond immigration status, the groups who are more likely to say they do not have enough information to understand how immigration policy affects them and their families include immigrants with limited English proficiency, those who have been in the U.S. for fewer than five years, have lower household incomes, and/or have lower levels of education.

Across immigrants, there is a general lack of knowledge about public charge rules. Under longstanding U.S. policy, federal officials can deny an individual entry to the U.S. or adjustment to lawful permanent status (a green card) if they determine the individual is a " public charge" based on their likelihood of becoming primarily dependent on the government for subsistence. In 2019, the Trump Administration made changes to public charge policy that newly considered the use of previously excluded noncash assistance programs for health care, food, and housing in public charge determinations. This policy was rescinded by the Biden Administration in 2021, meaning that the use of noncash benefits, including assistance for health care, food, and housing, is not considered for public charge tests, except for long-term institutionalization at government expense. The survey suggests that many immigrants remain confused about public charge rules. Six in ten immigrants say they are "not sure" whether use of public programs that help pay for health care, housing or food can decrease one's chances for green card approval and another 16% incorrectly believe this to be the case. Among immigrants who are likely undocumented, nine in ten are either unsure (68%) or incorrectly believe use of these types of public programs will decrease their chances for green card approval (22%).

What Are Immigrants Plans And Hopes For The Future?

Six in ten immigrants say they plan to stay in the U.S. However, about one in five immigrants say they want to move back to the country they were born in (12%) or to another country (7%), and about one in five (21%) say they are not sure. The desire to stay in the U.S. varies by immigration status as well as by race and ethnicity. Nearly two in three immigrants who are naturalized citizens say they plan to stay in the country, compared to about half of immigrants who have a green card or valid visa (54%) or immigrants who are likely undocumented (52%). Black immigrants are somewhat more likely than immigrants from other racial or ethnic backgrounds to say they plan to leave the U.S. (28%). This includes 17% who say they want to move back to their country of birth and 11% who say they want to move to a different country.

Three in four immigrants say they would choose to come to the U.S. again. Asked what they would do if given the chance to go back in time knowing what they know now, three in four immigrants (75%) say they would choose to come to the U.S. again, including large shares across ages, educational attainment, income, immigration status, and race and ethnicity. While most immigrants share this sentiment, overall, about one in ten (8%) immigrants say they would not choose to move to the U.S. and about one in five (17%) say they are not sure whether they would choose to move to the U.S.
In Their Own Words: Focus Group Participants Say They Would Choose To Come To The U.S. Again In focus groups, many participants said that despite the challenges they face in the U.S., life is better here than in their country of birth. When asked whether they would choose to come again, many said yes and pointed to how they have more opportunities for themselves and their children to have a better standard of living.
"So I will not change anything for my kids or for myself. I think it didn't work out like I expected to do but I don't regret it because my kids have the better chance to have a better education system"-42-year-old Ghanian immigrant woman in California

"I can say from my experience, it was really hard. God made everything right now because I have my papers. But I agreed to stay here for my children, so that they have a better life tomorrow. Because home is worse." - 48-year-old Haitian immigrant woman in Florida

"Of course, I would still come to America. When I compare my current state with that of my old neighbors, who are my age as well, this place is a far cry from it." - 40-year-old Vietnamese immigrant man in Texas

"We're happy because we have a better life, even though we always miss our homeland. But it's better." - 35-year-old Mexican immigrant man in California

"I can say that America gives me many options, many opportunities, so far I like it. The only thing I don't like is how the bills are here, they come fast when you make a small amount of money many times it goes through the bill." - 30-year-old Haitian immigrant man in Florida

Conclusion

Immigrants represent a significant and growing share of the U.S. population, contributing to their communities and to the nation's culture and economy. Immigrants come to the U.S. largely seeking better opportunities and lives for themselves and their children, often leaving impoverished and sometimes dangerous conditions in their country of birth. For many, this dream has been realized despite ongoing challenges they face in the U.S.

Many immigrants recognize work as a key element to achieving their goals and are willing to fill physically demanding, lower paid jobs, for which some feel they are overqualified. Immigrants are disproportionately employed in agricultural, construction, and service jobs that are often essential for our nation's infrastructure and operations.

Despite high rates of employment and, for many, an improved situation relative to their county of birth, many immigrants face serious challenges in the U.S. Finances are a top challenge and concern, with many having difficulty making ends meet and paying for basic needs. Moreover, although most immigrants feel welcome in their neighborhood, many face discrimination and unfair treatment on the job, in their communities, and while seeking health care. Fears of detention and deportation are a concern for immigrants across immigration statuses, sometimes affecting daily lives and interactions, particularly among those who are likely undocumented.

Some immigrants face more challenges than others, reflecting the diversity of the immigrant experience and the compounding impacts of intersectional factors such as immigration status, race and ethnicity, and income. Black and Hispanic immigrants, likely undocumented immigrants, immigrants with limited English proficiency, and lower income immigrants face disproportionate challenges given the impacts of racism, fears and uncertainties related to immigration status, language barriers, and financial challenges. Many immigrants lack sufficient information to understand how U.S. immigration laws and policies impact them and their families. This confusion and lack of certainty contributes to some immigrants avoiding accessing assistance programs that could ease financial challenges and facilitate access to health care for themselves and their children, who are often U.S.-born.

As the immigrant population in the U.S. continues to grow, recognizing their contributions and challenges of immigrants and addressing their diverse needs will be important for improving the nation's overall health and economic prosperity.

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Understanding the U.S. Immigrant Experience: The 2023 KFF/LA Times Survey of Immigrants - Findings - 10217 | KFF

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Executive Summary The Survey of Immigrants, conducted by KFF in partnership with the Los Angeles Times during Spring 2023, examines the diversity of the U.S. immigrant experience. It is the largest and most representative survey of immigrants living in the U.S. to date.

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In the article, “Racial Justice” from Amnesty International, I read that the international law, “racial discrimination” is known as, “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.” One other thing is the privileges that white people have or had. For example, the access they have to healthcare and education. I found it interesting how the author talked about this because it’s not talked about much.

Around the world, the police system is ruined by racial discriminatory practices. Black people, as well as Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and other racially marginalized communities are all affected by these offensive practices. They have been put through racial profiling, unlawful arrests, cruel, and inhumane treatment. And for no reason they experience identity checks, arrests, and many many offenses. In the 17th century, African Americans were enslaved. Many were shipped across the Atlantic, and kidnapped. Slavery increased wealth and opportunities for many white people.

I think that this should not be going on today, and it’s unfair to many people. I was shocked to read that it’s still such a big problem today because it was so long ago. Racial discrimination was back in the 17th century and shouldn’t be happening. I agree with the fact that everyone should be treated equally, and not by their race. Race does not define who someone is. Police brutality towards someone of a different race is also a problem when it shouldn’t be. I believe that people should stand up to these issues, and try to make a change. This Civil Right issue has the potential to no longer be a problem. These articles have helped me understand why we should figure out a way to stop racial discrimination, and why we should still recognize it today.

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Racial and Women Discrimination- Ilana
I read "Forbes Why Racism Should Be Seen As A Global Issue" an article created by Maia Niguel Hoskins, explaining the discrimination still happening today. Maria stated that “...Ukraine was another sobering reminder about why racism must be addressed as a global issue and not only a domestic concern.” (Last sentence of ¶ 1) I learned about the sexism and racism going on throughout Ukraine today. There have been multiple videos of African Americans being treated very poorly along with women being excluded from many situations. I learned that most people are not shocked by the treatment of these two groups because sexism and racism have been a global problem for forever. Especially in Ukraine many people there are not respectful to non Ukrainians.
I think that this problem is extremely horrible and a huge downside to our society. The amount of hatred that is pointed towards these groups is not decreasing. As a country we have always talked about how we will never look back to women's lack of rights or segregation but if you look at it, we have not gotten much better. All though these people have more rights they are still treated differently. They are all humans and they should be treated equally.

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In the article History of Lynching in America published in 2023 by NAACP I learned that a lynching is the public killing of an individual who has not received any due process. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries. From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S very often. Black people were the primary victims of lynching with around 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. Immigrants from Mexico, China, Australia, and other countries were also lynched. Hundreds of Black people were lynched based on accusations of other crimes, including murder, arson, robbery, and vagrancy. They could get lynched because of false accusations too according too.

This article helped me understand the unfair and harsh treatments of blacks during this time of America. I also learned what a lynching was and how bad they were. I thought it was just killing blacks and didn't realize it included public execution and torture. After reading this I realize how privileged whites were compared to blacks. It helped me realize that we should continue to teach kids about this and bring awareness to the topic so it doesn't happen again or lead to a different hate crime.

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I read the article “PBS Civil Rights Today,” by Alan Jenkins. This article was from an interview he did with Maria Daniels from WGBH Boston in July of 2006. In this article I learnt that there are people working towards making equality a reality, but we all have a long way to go to get there. He uses Hurricane Katrina as an example of inequality. The neighborhoods where most of the African Americans lived were in a harder to reach place than the other neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods were the first to flood and the first to be swallowed up in the storm.

I think that this was very unfair to those neighborhoods. They should be the same distance from hospitals and jobs as everyone else. It just proves some of the ineqialities that we have nowdays. Although many countries are getting better at being equal, we are far from being truly equal.

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The history of lynching. A lynching is the public killing of someone who has not received any due process. These kills were often carried out by lawless mobs like the kkk, though police officers did participate. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, usally in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive. One thing that I learned about was that they had killed a 9 month pregnant woman by burning her, and cutting out her baby then stomping on it. A lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards. The 1891 New Orleans lynchings was one of the biggest lynchings ever there were the murders of 11 Italian Americans and Italian immigrants in New Orleans by a mob for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy after some of them had been acquitted at trial. It was the largest single mass lynching in American history. doing this protect has taught me lots about the history of lynching, in fact before this I didnt even know what lynching was. I got most of my information from:

https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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I read an article called "The History of Lynchings in America" that was written by the NAACP in 2023, it discusses lynchings in America during the 1880's through the 1960's. Lynchings were a very common activity in 1882 to 1968. There was a lot of racial injustices in that time frame and lynching was one of the most popular. Lynchings  is the public killing of a person that hasn’t had any legal decision for their crime. They were most often hangings but they could also be mutilation, decapitation, or burnings. From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the U.S. And 72% of people that were lynched were black. Other records vary because there were no official records of the lynchings. First in number of lynchings was Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493. However lynchings did not occur in every state. Most of the time the lynchings were based on false accounts and were just an excuse for the black people to be harmed.

During the 1930’s to the 60’s there was a mass move called the Great Migration which  was a way to get away from the lynchings. People also boycotted white owned stores and businesses. The NAACP formed during the time of the Great Migration to fight for racial justice. The lynchings started to decline in the 1930’s because of the efforts to stop them and the Great Depression. Even though there wasn’t as many lynching going into the 1960’s but there was still a lot of anger and violence toward black people. There are still common day lynchings like the George Flyod and James Byrd cases. Even though the lynching have become less common there are still racial injustices and inequalities in our day to day life.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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Why we're still fighting- Blakely Buttler

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Why we're still fighting- Blakely Buttler

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In the article "Civil Rights Today" by Alan Jenkins on July 2006, I was curious to find out that many people are still experiencing racism in school today. The article stated that black children were treater differently at school, specifically because of their race, by both students and teachers. This is one of the reasons that in the past, black children and young adults have had less access to a better education, such as getting in to colleges. This article also said that the civil rights groups today have been protesting and fighting for better education for black students, and that they have been able to increase the amount of black women that attend college.

I think that school should be a place where all children, no matter their race, religion, background, or anything at all, should receive a quality and equal education. This article reminds me of the riots in 2020 that I saw on the news. The violence and bloodshed, all just to get human equality, something that shouldn't have to be fought for. I believe that students should be able to go to school without worrying about bullying, especially about something as serious as race. Schools should start taking this seriously, and make a change.

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Back then the civil rights movement was made to stop the whole slavery thing and give the African-Americans an equal amount of ability to be people The civil rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made laws aimed to eradicate discriminatory practices and ensure equal protection under the law for all citizens. NOW: the central focus is still people of different races, we also focus on the LGBTQ+ people, transgender folk, and the immigrant rights are the other parts of current civil rights activism. social media also gave awereness to the whole racist things with the #blacklivesmatter and the #metoo movements. we have widespread things so everyone knows and (hopefully)  advocate for equal rights and justice for all!
after i read a civil rights article from a civil rights 101 thing I honestly found a TON of stuff from what even is a civil right to what we do nowadays!

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The Government is the Key to Ending Discrimination - Ryan

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The Government is the Key to Ending Discrimination - Ryan

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I read two articles and in the first one "Civil Rights Movement," by History made in October 2023. I learned more about the Jim Crow Laws and how they made it to where black people couldn't go to the same school, live in the same towns, or use the same facilities. In the second article "Civil Rights Today," by WGBH Educational Foundation in 2023. It talks about making living better for black people because when Hurricane Katrina hit it was hard for black people to get out of there towns due to them being the hardest to get out of and being the most vulnerable to flooding. They are trying to get the government to start taking action instead of overlooking them like they don't need help.

When I read these read these two articles it didn't see like much had changed since then. The only thing that had changed since then was the lynchings and those don't happen anymore. The things that stayed the same however was the government overlooking the lives of black people and their living conditions. The black people are still being discriminated from the white people from the neighborhoods that they live in. White people live in nice neighborhoods that get things done when they need it and if there is an emergency they can get there quickly and easily. While black people don't get those luxuries and have to live in neighborhoods that aren't great so they have a harder time getting to the places they need and getting a good job that will keep them on their feet. I think that this is wrong because of what the government isn't doing to help they just overlook these places and worry more about white places. if there is going to be a change the government has to make whether they pass laws or they figure out another way to make everybody's lives equal.

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In the article titled, “Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror”  written by Equal Justice Initiative, in 2017, it relays the research done by Equal Justice Initiative (Or EJI for short). In the study EJI researched look at no only why Lynching was bad but also the effects it had on our life today. Some effects were mass discomfort with talking about how we felt about these terrible actions which left the U.S in denial about our radical history. The article then goes state that because there was no monument or memorial for the thousands of African-Americans who were lynched, this shows as a country how we have not shown value to African-Americans . As well as reinforcing the the story of difference in race making a difference in our daily lives which is continuing to show up in our courts as problems.

This article reinforce my beliefs that we need to address social issues rather than push them to the side until they come up again. But I am curious on the research they did to find these results and maybe they would have changed after the events of BLM. I think the most interesting elements of this article was it talking about the effects it has on todays everyday lives. Something I discovered about about lynching was that there is no memorial or anything for those lynching victims.

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Before we heal the wounds from our present, we must face our past.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom 

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We know that the civil rights movement is one of the most popular movements to date. But what makes it so popular? Is it because of the long process it took to give African Americans the same rights as whites? Is it all the abuse that the African Americans had to endure during the long painful process of being accepted? Or maybe it is just simply because of the “I Have a Dream Speech” by Martin Luther King JR.

I read an article called "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom," by the Library of Congress which was recently updated in 2016. This article tells of the good and the bad of the Civil Rights Movement. It goes through the struggles of the African Americans while waiting for their rights to be the same rights as the white man. We will hear a little bit about how the Civil Rights Movement affected Ruby Sales.

From this article I learned that the Civil Rights Act hastened the end of the legal Jim Crow. The Jim Crow law made it hard for African Americans to eat at restaurants, go to school, or be allowed in any other public facilities owned by the white man. I find this completely unfair and I think that they deserved better than what they got.

Ruby Sales discusses her father's military career, and how when he returned home he was still fighting, his family was fighting. The whole African American population was fighting. She tells her story about Jonathan Daniels, a civil rights activist who died saving Ruby Sales. Sales also recalls her time in jail and how she finds that it is still ridiculous that there are still more African Americans in jail.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 hastened the end of legal Jim Crow. It secured African Americans equal access to restaurants, transportation, and other public facilities. It enabled blacks, women, and other minorities to break down barriers in the workplace. It also made access to equal education a reality for the many Southern and Northern African Americans who began attending integrated schools in the wake of the act's enforcement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 expanded these protections to voting and housing, and provided new protections against racially motivated violence. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and President Johnson's War on Poverty complemented these civil rights milestones by attacking the economic inequalities that had so long accompanied racial discrimination and exclusion.

The civil rights struggle and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also served as blueprints and inspiration for many other groups of Americans seeking equality and access. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which barred employment discrimination based on sex as well as race, color, religion, and national origins, energized the women's movement and led to the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. Emboldened by the remarkable achievement of the 1964 act, activists have convinced Congress to protect such groups as older Americans, people with disabilities, and pregnant women so that they could participate fully in public and private life.

Even so, the struggle for equality is far from over. As transformative as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its successors have been, the exclusion, exploitation, and discrimination that it targeted were deeply entrenched and have proved difficult to end. The act and its subsequent enforcement continue to prompt new debates about what equality means, what government can do to promote it, and how ordinary Americans can continue to achieve it. The future of civil rights, like its past, will be shaped by citizens' participation in lobbying, litigation, politics, and public protests.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

An act to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States, to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains eleven segments or Titles. Some of the Titles, especially those that establish prohibitions on discrimination in public accommodations (Title II), federal funding (Title VI), and employment (Title VII), have generated a number of important cases in the courts. Other Titles, which were largely procedural in nature and have generated few judicial interpretations in the years since, have not. Listed below particular Titles are selected cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court or a lower court issued landmark decisions that established precedent for interpreting provisions of the act.

TITLE I: Voting Rights

Barred unequal application of state voter registration requirements for federal elections.

TITLE II: Public Accommodations

Prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin in certain places of public accommodation, such as hotels, restaurants, and places of entertainment.

Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. U.S. (1964)

Upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibition of race discrimination in hotels and motels as a valid exercise of Congress's Interstate Commerce Clause power (Georgia)

Katzenbach v. McClung (1964)

Upheld the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibition of race discrimination in restaurants as a valid exercise of Congress's Interstate Commerce Clause power (Alabama)

Hamm v. City of Rock Hill (1964)

Dismissed state breach-of-the-peace charges against sit-in demonstrators at a lunch counter because the charges conflicted with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (South Carolina)

TITLE III: Desegregation of Public Facilities

Permitted the U.S. Justice Department to sue to secure desegregation of certain public facilities owned, operated, or managed by any state or subdivision of a state.

U.S. v. Wyandotte County (1973)

Found that a county jail's policy of segregating prisoners by race violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964; a vague fear of violence could not justify such a policy (Kansas)

TITLE IV: Desegregation of Public Education

Authorized the U.S. Attorney General to receive complaints alleging denials of equal protection, to investigate those complaints, and to file suit in U.S. District Court to seek desegregation of the school. Also authorized the Secretary of Education to provide funds to school boards to assist their desegregation efforts.

TITLE V: Civil Rights Commission

Addressed procedures for the Civil Rights Commission, broadened its duties, and extended its life through January 1968. Its duties included investigating allegations that citizens were deprived of their right to vote or to have their vote properly counted. It also studied legal developments related to a denial of equal protection of the law, particularly in the domains of voting, education, housing, employment, public accommodations, transportation, and the administration of justice.

TITLE VI: Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs

Prohibited discrimination by recipients of federal funds on the basis of race, color, and national origin.

Lau v. Nichols (1974)

Ruled a school that accepted federal funds and did not provide adequate English courses or other educational benefits to students of Chinese ancestry, who did not speak English, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (California)

Cannon v. University of Chicago (1979)

Determined that Title VI created a private remedy as well as authorized the withholding of federal funds from education programs that discriminated on the basis of race (Illinois)

Alexander v. Sandoval (2001)

Determined that Title VI only authorized private remedies for lawsuits based on intentional discrimination and not on evidence of disparate impact (Alabama)

Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)

Held that discrimination, which violates Equal Protection Clause of Fourteenth Amendment, committed by an institution that accepts federal funds also constitutes violation of Title VI (Michigan)

TITLE VII: Equal Employment Opportunity

Outlawed employment discrimination by businesses affecting commerce with at least twenty-five employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971)

Ruled that the use of tests to determine employment that were not substantially related to job performance and that had a disparate impact on racial minorities violated Title VII (North Carolina)

Phillips v. Martin Marietta (1971)

Ruled that not hiring mothers of preschool-aged children while hiring fathers of preschool-aged children violated Title VII; the first sex discrimination case to go to the U.S. Supreme Court (Florida)

McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green (1973)

Found that an employee who presents initial evidence of racial discrimination requires an employer to show a legitimate lawful reason why the employee was not hired. The employee is then entitled to show that employer's conduct was a pretext for racial discrimination (Missouri)

Hazelwood School District v. United States (1977)

Ruled that statistical evidence comparing the racial composition of an employer's workforce with that of the relevant labor market could substantiate an initial case of discrimination (Missouri)

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power v. Manhart (1978)

Determined that an employer may not use the fact that women, as a group, live longer than men to justify a policy of requiring female employees to make larger contributions to a pension plan in order to receive the same monthly pension benefits when they retire (California)

United Steelworkers v. Weber (1979)

Held that Title VII permitted private sector employers and unions to implement voluntary affirmative action plans to remedy past discrimination (Louisiana)

Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson (1986)

Held that Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination also included a prohibition on sexual harassment (Washington, D.C.)

Johnson v. Transportation Agency, Santa Clara County (1987)

Ruled voluntary affirmative action programs for women in fields where they had previously been excluded were constitutional under certain circumstances (California)

International Union, UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc. (1991)

Ruled that barring women of childbearing age from certain jobs due to potential harm to a fetus constituted sex discrimination under Title VII (Wisconsin)

Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc. (1998)

Ruled that sex discrimination consisting of same-sex sexual harassment is actionable under Title VII (Louisiana)

Ricci v. DeStefano (2009)

Held that New Haven officials violated Title VII by ignoring results of a test in which white firefighters performed better than black and Latino firefighters (Connecticut)

EEOC Chairman Clifford Alexander, Jr., on Title VII

Clifford Alexander, Jr., (b. 1933), chairman from 1967-1969 of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discusses limitations of the commission's power resulting from an amendment to the bill authored by Senator Everett Dirksen (R-IL). The interview was broadcast May 26, 1969, on Black Journal over National Educational Television, shortly after Alexander had resigned as EEOC chairman, while remaining on the commission.

EEOC Chair Eleanor Holmes Norton on Title VII

Eleanor Holmes Norton (b. 1937), chair from 1977-1981 of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, answers questions about Title VII from columnist George Will on Meet the Press, broadcast July 2, 1978, on NBC and discusses the responsibilities of employers for ending discrimination.

TITLE VIII: Registration and Voting Statistics

Directed the Census Bureau to collect registration and voting statistics based on race, color, and national origin but provided that individuals could not be compelled to disclose such information.

TITLE IX: Intervention in Court Cases

Permitted the United States to intervene in pending suits alleging a denial of equal protection of law under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on account of race, color, religion, or national origin.

TITLE X: Community Relations Service

Created the Community Relations Service to aid communities in resolving disputes relating to discriminatory practices based on race, color, or national origin.

Hernandez v. Erlenbusch (1973)

Referred a case involving a tavern that had adopted a policy prohibiting the use of a foreign language at the bar to the Community Relations Service to see if they could provide assistance (Oregon)

Goldsby v. Carnes (1977)

Described how the Community Relations Service assisted the parties to a consent judgment regarding the conditions and administration of a county jail (Missouri)

TITLE XI: Court Proceedings and Legalities

In any proceeding for criminal contempt arising under Title II, III, IV, V, VI, or VII of this act, the accused, upon demand therefore, shall be entitled to a trial by jury.

United States v. Rapone (1997)

Held that a Department of Corrections official charged with criminal contempt for violating court order prohibiting retaliation against witnesses was entitled to a jury trial under Title XI (Washington, D.C.)

Civil Rights Activist Ruby Sales Interviewed by Joseph Mosnier in 2011

Civil rights activist Ruby Sales (b. 1948) discusses the meaning of the "Freedom Movement" instead of the "Civil Rights Movement" in an interview conducted by Joseph Mosnier (b. 1962) for the Civil Rights History Project in 2011.

Lawyer Derrick Bell Interviewed by Camille O. Cosby in 2005

Lawyer Derrick Bell (1930-2011) discusses the limits of civil rights law and ending segregation in an interview conducted by Camille O. Cosby (b. 1945) for the National Visionary Leadership Project in 2005.

Haywood Burns on Limitations of the Civil Rights Law

Haywood Burns (1940-1996), director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, discusses structural inequality and other limitations of the civil rights law in a panel discussion broadcast February 15, 1972, on Black Journal on National Educational Television.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom Epilogue

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 hastened the end of legal Jim Crow. The civil rights struggle served as a blueprint and inspiration for many other groups seeking equality and access. The act and its enforcement continue to prompt new debates about what equality means, what government can do to promote it, and how ordinary Americans can continue to achieve it.

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Lynching: The long and Painful History behind it 

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Lynching: The long and Painful History behind it 

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In the article I read titled "Lynching" by Dennis Downey in 2014 informed me that Lynching is the act of killing victims by mobbing them, hanging them, or lighting them on fire. Lynching used to mean whipping - like what was done to slaves - but began to be a way of killing in the civil war. Lynching happens everywhere and used to include everyone - no matter what their skin color was. However, lynching most commonly in the United States during the civil war era. 80% of all of these lynchings were done in the south towards the African-Americans. Most of the lynchings were done by the KKK - the Klu Klux Klan and they did not face any criminal punishment for their crimes.

This article taught me all about lynchings. It taught me what lynchings were and just how horrible they truly were. I had a hard time reading about lynchings due to how graphic all of them are. It is so cruel to light people on fire as a way of killing them - especially just because of the color of their skin. This truly shows how black people were treated in the 1800s and it is horrible to have this be in our nations country. Looking back, this was a horrible thing to have happened, but forgetting about this would not honor the victims. it is important to learn about this so that we do not repeat this in the future.

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Lynching, the extralegal killing of a victim by individuals or a mob, notably by hanging or burning, was commonplace in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Though accounts vary, in the heyday of lynching following the Civil War, at least 3,500 incidents were recorded; more than 80 percent occurred in the American South and targeted African Americans. Though less frequently, lynchings also occurred in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and New Jersey. Two of the most sensational incidents occurred in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1903 and Coatesville, Pennsylvania, eight years later.

In an incident dubbed by newspapers as the "Delaware Horror," in June 1903 a mob watched as African American farm laborer George White burned alive on the outskirts of Wilmington. Accused of having assaulted a teenage girl and leaving her to die, White was kidnapped from the New Castle workhouse and returned to the site of his alleged crime as an angry crowd jostled for position. His plea for help-"Mercy, Master, Mercy"-went unaided and afterwards spectators retrieved souvenir body parts.

Philadelphia newspapers provided ample coverage of the episode and the efforts of local civil rights activist and A.M.E. pastor Montrose Thornton to hold the guilty accountable. They also published dozens of letters both praising and condemning the mob action. Like the one previously recorded racial lynching in Delaware (near Smyrna in 1867), no one was ever prosecuted. The Wilmington lynching was one of a half-dozen barbaric "spectacle lynchings" that occurred across the North in 1903. In retrospect, the Wilmington lynching has eerie similarities to events in Coatesville eight years later.

On Sunday evening August 13, 1911-"that quiet Sabbath evening," W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) wrote scornfully-an estimated two thousand people watched as Zachariah Walker was burned alive in a field just outside Coatesville, Chester County. Walker, a newly arrived African American laborer from Virginia, worked at the Worth Brothers Steel Company. He was accused of killing a popular white security guard in what might well have been an act of self-defense. As teenage boys piled more wood on the fire, Walker pleaded with his captors, "Don't give me no crooked death because I'm not white." When the deed was done, scores of people waited hours to retrieve souvenirs from the flickering embers.

The Coatesville lynching typified the well-orchestrated mob execution that historian Michael Pfeifer has summed up in the phrase "rough justice." Like George White in Delaware, Walker was not afforded due process, and the formal administration of justice broke down completely. Chester County juries found the alleged perpetrators not guilty, and crowds cheered when the men and teenage boys emerged from the county court house in West Chester. Despite evidence, in both cases no one was convicted of a crime.

The most unusual characteristic of the Coatesville episode (and Wilmington, too) was its geographic setting beyond the American South. Coatesville was a prosperous northern steel town, and a community in the throes of significant social and economic change brought on by rapid industrialization and the sustained in-migration of both European and southern Black laborers. Racial and ethnic tensions were at their height in a borough already layered with deep class divisions. Much to the dismay of civil rights advocates like Du Bois, Ida Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), and T. Thomas Fortune (1856-1928), the Wilmington and Coatesville incidents were reminders that mob violence every bit as vicious as the worst southern atrocities could occur beyond the old Confederacy.

Lynchings were often underreported, and attempted lynchings, including two later incidents in Coatesville, often have been ignored in the history of racial violence. While accounts vary, African Americans were victims in six of the fourteen recorded lynchings in Pennsylvania history. Eight of the estimated ten lynchings in the rest of the mid-Atlantic region included Black victims. Though the total number of northern racial lynchings ebbed with the rise of organized resistance, the spreading pall of twentieth-century urban rioting in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Newark, and elsewhere, served as a reminder of racial violence as a persistent social reality.

The memory of lynching also persists. In the early 1990s a prominent resident of Coatesville proudly displayed to a historian a self-igniting miniature scaffold he had manufactured in homage to the lynching. And in January 2000, a white resident of the Juniata Park section of Philadelphia was convicted of the crimes of ethnic intimidation and assault for placing a makeshift noose around a Black co-worker's neck. Although not as well publicized as the case of the Jena Six in Louisiana (2006), the incident in Philadelphia, like the scaffold, was another reminder of the insensitivity, blatant prejudice, and conflicting social fears that underlay the gruesome legacy of lynching and racial intimidation in the United States and the Greater Philadelphia region.

Dennis B. DowneyPh.D., is Professor of History and Director of the University Honors College, Millersville University. With Raymond M. Hyser, he is the author of 'No Crooked Death': Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991; reprint 2011). (Author information current at time of publication.)

Copyright 2014, Rutgers University

Downey, Dennis B., and Raymond M. Hyser, 'No Crooked Death': Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1991; reprint 2011.

Downey, Dennis B. " 'The Delaware Horror': Two Ministers, A Lynching and the Crisis of Democracy," in Michael J. Pfeifer, ed. Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2013, pp. 237-260.

Pfeifer, Michael J. Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006.

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Lynching - Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia

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Lynchings, the extralegal killing of a victim by individuals or a mob, occurred in Wilmington, Del., in 1903 and Coatesville, Pa., eight years later.

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The Vile History Of Lynchings in America

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The Vile History Of Lynchings in America

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The article titled "HISTORY OF LYNCHING IN AMERICA" by the NAACP is an informative article about the lynchings that happened in America. From this reading, I learned about how lynchings were started, how long they lasted, and how different acts of violence could be seen as modern-day lynchings. I also learned that the highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 lynchings officially recorded. Within the past 30 years, different black people have been brutalized. These modern-day lynchings are a lot less widespread but they are still happening in 2023.

I believe that this is extremely unfair and that these lynchings go against the United States Constitution.  I was shocked to learn that in 1998, a black man was chained to a car by three white people and he was dragged to his death in Texas. This happened 25 years ago, which is still really relevant to our time. Another shocking thing that I learned was that in 2020, a man by the name of Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot while jogging in Georgia.  This article makes me wonder if lynching fully went away, or if they just evolved to different forms. A personal experience that I've seen of hatred towards black people is in the comments of posts online. I've lost track of the number of different comments I have seen that discriminate against black people. I firmly believe that any form of abuse towards people should not be happening, especially if the only reason why someone does it is because of the color of someone's skin color.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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In the article entitled “History of Lynching in America” by the NAACP, in 2023. From this article I learned that lynching was bad for the black people and it was cruel for them and did not deserve that kind of disrespect. They were often carried out by lawless mobs, and were violent acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, mostly in the South. They mostly evoke images of black men and women hanging.

I think this was unfair to the black people, and the white people were rude and disrespectful to the black people.  Everyone should be treated equally. know one should superior over the other. Equally.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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Lynching History, & NAACP Starting. By Mackenzie Erickson, 10/20/23.

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Lynching History, & NAACP Starting. By Mackenzie Erickson, 10/20/23.

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What does Lynching mean? Lynching means a public murder that happened with most people that “did wrong”. Some lynching was for no reason at all, except for racism. Lynching was a proccess used by white people to terrioize the black people, to show that white people are dominate to the race and black people feel as they do not belong. Lynching seemed to be people hanged, tortured, burned, beat up, etc. And it would feel terrible, like the pain was eternal until you die. How they got the blacks to be lynched, there needed to be a reason. So the whites made false reasons to the blacks to tell the officers so the blacks can get lynched. Though that was how people did it in back in the day, people were killed in public places of humiliation.

Lynching started in the 19th century up to the 20th, during the Civil Rights Era. Many people were killed in those years, as it was a full on “war” of blacks vs. rights basically. In different states, in the past, there were different murders for different states. It was hard to count how many deaths, as not all were reported. But there was an estimate of 4,743.

The lynching was big on most black people, and the people in the U.S. at that time, probably around 50-75% estimated were lynched. There was whites that felt bad for the blacks so they did help, but also got lynched. So not all of them were actually black.

During a Great Migration, NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) came as a helping hand to defeat Lynching. So there was more of a battle of whites vs. blacks, except it was remove lynching vs. lynching. But like illnesses as the cure is only going away on its own, there is little lynching further in the past. From NAACP sending messages to make lynching illegal, it started to work. Now today, just a little lynching. As it's more of murdering with guns, or beaten. Of course they’ll go to jail, but from the laws, it's a terrible crime now. People just have to accept the blacks are also humans like whites.

Speaking of accepting, there was a person in 1918 named Walter White, a mix of black and white. From his looks he identified as a white, but he was known as black. He was able to talk to blacks freely, without causing much trouble. The mix of him made it easy for him to investigate lynchings. Finding a way to solve them, and prevent them.

The investigations Walter White sought, was of Mary Turner and Jesse Mcllherron. Mary Turner had her husband dead from the frame of possible murder, and Mary spoke against the whites. Resulting her in a Lynch, same to her baby. Jesse Mcllherron was an armed man that was fighting Whites, and known to be fearful to Officers. Though he was caught and lynched.

The lynching ended in the 1960’s or so, but is still rarely continued as a different way. My source is: https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america (Just copy an paste it or type it in a search bar to get it), A website from NAACP that explains the history of lynching. A clear understanding as it was made by NAACP.

My opinion on all of this is that the source I got it from, is a perfect clear understanding of what Lynching means and the history of it because it talks about the history and the company was there when it started. As Lynching can still happen today, as a form of just murder, it is a huge crime. The thought I found confusing was, with Mary Turner and Jesse Mcllherron, they seemed to stay alive longer than others it seemed like, and I just wonder why?

The Lynching also reminds me of Prometheus, how the bird came back everday to eat at him, and his body would regrow each time to suffer everyday. Except he is inmortal, but the Lynch reminds me of that. History keeps repeating itself, it is like a quote from everywhere. Said by some, or maybe just me.

I do feel sorry for the people who got lynched, as they gotten blamed and humiliated while in pain infront of the citizens. The thing I don’t get is also, why couldn’t the past whites just see if the people bleed as they do? And that they have the same flesh? Someday in the future, whites on earth will become black because someday the sun will come closer and closer to the earth. As it’ll be like a dessert. The sun can change a person's color, as a white person can become tan or black, well in my theory anyway. Though the blacks are nothing new, whenever America was “founded” Native Americans pondered about the black who was with Christophor Columbus, and I believe also there were slaves back in the day. Of course the slaves were none more, but then later in time people treated the blacks as like they were aliens. From a different world. They should be brought to death, the blacks have been in the world since, forever probably. So why treat them as rust in the past, well, the whites in the past just were monkeys that couldn’t solve a problem the right way of peace.

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White Americans used lynching to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries. NAACP led a courageous battle against lynching.

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In the article titled An American Lynching I could hear the screams written by Jaclynn Ashly On Oct 20,2020. This article talks about all of the history of lynchings and what happened during them. Lynchings are  an act of collective violence like that inflicted upon thousands of African Americans throughout US history. The EJI has done research and found that 4,084 “racial terror” lynchings in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950, and at least 300 lynchings in other states during the same period.

This article helped me understand how bad these lynchings actually were and how bad the people were treated. Before I read this article I thought that lynchings were just killing people but I found out that they burned down their houses and they even kidnapped black people from jail because they thought that jails were too nice for them to live in. They even killed the black people for protesting against slavery and how they were treated. This article has helped me understand lynchings and how bad they were a lot.

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How a mass lynching and the people re-enacting it are forcing the US to confront the truth of its past and its present.

The annual re-enactment of the country's last documented mass lynching; people recreate the contentious primary democratic elections in Georgia, along with the lynching [Jaclynn Ashly/Al Jazeera]

Monroe, Georgia - A Confederate monument - a musket-strapped soldier perched atop a marble base - stands tall in the grounds of the historic Walton County courthouse in the city of Monroe, about an hour east of Atlanta, Georgia.

Erected more than 100 years ago, it is situated in the centre of the city's downtown business district, whose blocks of quaint red brick buildings eventually give way to residential neighbourhoods where "Trump-Pence 2020" signs pierce freshly-cut lawns and Confederate flags flutter in the breeze.

Beyond the neatly-aligned homes are miles of vibrant green fields, once used as cotton plantations, and beyond those, down a short dirt road, is a small cemetery, with an old, white church at its entrance.

Among the wooden crosses, tombs and gravestones sits the shared headstone of siblings George Dorsey and Dorothy Malcolm.

The lives of 28-year-old George and 20-year-old Dorothy, along with those of their spouses, Mae Murray Dorsey, 24, and Roger Malcolm, 24, were cut short 74 years ago in the United States's last documented mass lynching.

Their lives ended by the Moore's Ford Bridge, a few miles from downtown Monroe, in a remote backwoods, but their story is one that can be traced back through the country's violent past and forward to its troubled present.

'I could feel their spirits'

Fifty-nine-year-old Patrice Dorsey's mother was a cousin of George and Dorothy.

She refers to the Moore's Ford Bridge, which traverses the Apalachee River and cuts through secluded forests of pine trees, brush and thickets, as the "killing fields".

She first visited it over a decade ago.

"My heart just sank and tears came to my eyes," she recalls. "I could feel their spirits there and I could hear their screams."

"I felt so sad for what had happened to them."

On July 14, 1946, Roger Malcolm, a Black sharecropper, was arrested for allegedly stabbing Barnette Hester, a white man who owned the farm Roger and his wife Dorothy were living on, during an argument. According to Anthony Pitch, an author and historian who dedicated the last six years of his life to uncovering the truth about the case, Roger had suspected for some time that Dorothy and Barnette were having a relationship.

Loy Harrison, a white landowner who employed Dorothy's family, including her brother George and his wife Mae, agreed to bail Roger out in exchange for him working on sawmill operations he was starting at his farm.

On July 25, as Hester remained in hospital, Harrison arrived at the jail and paid a $600 bond to get Roger released. He was accompanied by Dorothy, who is said to have been seven months pregnant, George, and Mae.

According to Pitch, the FBI later learned that in Walton County a Black man was "never bonded out of jail while a white man's life was in danger," and that "prior approval" for his release would have had to have come from "interested" parties.

Harrison, who according to an FBI report had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), never explained why he decided to take the longest route home from the jail, driving the couples toward Moore's Ford Bridge, which links Walton and Oconee counties.

But as Harrison's Pontiac sedan made its way over the wooden bridge, it was ambushed by a large group of white men. The mob, of about 20 to 25 people, hauled Roger and George, a World War II veteran, out of the vehicle, bound their wrists with rope and dragged them through the underbrush to the banks of the Apalachee River.

According to Harrison's statement to the FBI, Dorothy and Mae started screaming, and one of them yelled out the name of a man she recognised from the mob - a name Harrison said he could not recall.

The mob responded by dragging the women from the car and down to the river bank.

At some point, a 10-foot-long (three-metre) rope was tightly bound around Roger's neck.

Harrison said he heard the mob say, "One, two, three," which, according to Pitch, some believed to be a ritual that preceded executions carried out by the KKK.

The two young couples were executed in three volleys of gunfire. The coroner's report estimated that at least 60 shots had been fired at close range.

'Blood and terror'

It was an act of collective violence like that inflicted upon thousands of African Americans throughout US history.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a rights group that has done extensive research on the history of lynching in the US, has documented 4,084 "racial terror" lynchings in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950, and at least 300 lynchings in other states during the same period.

Kiara Boone, the EJI's deputy director of community education, explains that these numbers are most likely an "undercount". According to the group's data, lynchings in the US peaked between 1880 and 1940. Georgia was among the states with the highest number.

According to the EJI, Southern white communities used lynchings to assert "their racial dominance over the region's political and economic resources - a dominance first achieved through slavery would now be restored through blood and terror".

African Americans who had been arrested for an alleged crime against a white person were often kidnapped from jail by white mobs, with the collusion of local sheriffs, and lynched. The country's criminal justice system was deemed "too good" for Black people, Boone says, and led to scores being killed without a trial or investigation.

Hundreds more were killed for non-criminal offences - such as protesting against mistreatment or violating various "Black codes" implemented to maintain racial hierarchies in the South.

Crowds of white people, at times numbering in the thousands, would gather for public lynchings, which could involve prolonged torture, mutilation, dismemberment and burning of the Black victims. The EJI describes these as "carnival-like events," in which men, women and children would participate.

Following the lynchings, the spectators would excitedly grab "souvenirs" - pieces of rope, bloodied clothes, and body parts of the victims. Photographs of the lynchings, along with images of the mutilated and charred corpses, would be distributed.

'Message crimes'

Lynchings were "message crimes," explains Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who has written a book on the subject.

"They were meant to send a message to Black communities about the boundaries of citizenship and their ability to be full citizens in this country - and that message was delivered through this particular form of terrorism."

These lynchings were carried out by "ordinary people," she says.

"Of course the KKK was involved in lynchings, but what made it more terrifying was the role of ordinary people - the people in the crowd who egged it on or actively participated. It could be the local pharmacist, elected officials, members of the high school football team, or law students who were present and watched the show."

Lynchings were not just aimed at individuals, Ifill explains, but were commonly accompanied by "racial pogroms". White people "marauded through towns and burned down Black businesses, causing tremendous property damage, and assaulted and beat up Black people they found along the way" - often accompanied by local police.

The EJI has documented how, in response to "routinely fabricated" allegations of sexual transgressions against white women, white mobs would "target entire Black communities with violent, public and sexualized acts," including "the widespread rape of Black women, sometimes in front of their families; and genital mutilation and castration".

It was a tool to keep "Black people in their place" to ensure racial subordination and white supremacy following the abolition of slavery, Ifill explains.

This collective violence against Black communities was also aimed at controlling the political or voting rights of African Americans.

In 1946, the year that the Dorseys and Malcolms were gunned down at Moore's Ford Bridge, a contentious Democratic primary election for governor was under way in Georgia. Earlier that year, the US Supreme Court had ruled that the all-white Democratic primaries were unconstitutional; the 1946 elections were the first to be held in Georgia without a statewide ban on Black voting.

Eugene Talmadge, a gubernatorial candidate and well-known white supremacist, faced tough competition in the elections and escalated his inflammatory rhetoric against the Black community. It has been suggested that Talmadge's campaign to incite violence against Black citizens to keep them from the voting booths contributed to the lynching in Monroe.

Talmadge, who is considered one of the most "racially polarising figures in Georgia history" and whose statue still stands on the grounds of Georgia's state capitol, allegedly met with the brother of Barnette Hester in front of the Walton County courthouse shortly before the murders and offered immunity to anyone who would "take care" of Roger.

According to an FBI memo, the Monroe assistant police chief, who witnessed the meeting, believed Talmadge's promise of immunity was intended to secure the support of the Hester family in the upcoming election.

About a week before the Dorseys and Malcolms were slaughtered, Maceo Snipes, also a World War II veteran, made the bold decision to become the first African American to cast a vote in the July 17 primary in Taylor County, located about two hours from Monroe.

The following day, four white men, rumoured to be members of the local Klan chapter, arrived at Snipes's grandfather's farmhouse, where he was having dinner with his mother, called him outside and shot him in the back.

With the help of his mother, Snipes walked for three miles to a relative's home, from where he was driven to a nearby hospital. Despite desperately needing a blood transfusion, Snipes was told by doctors that there was no "Black blood" available at the hospital.

Two days later, he died from his injuries.

An FBI investigation

The bodies of George and Mae Dorsey and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm were left unattended, rotting by the banks of the river for almost two days. During the night, white Monroe residents trickled down to the crime scene and foraged for pieces of rope, bullets and teeth.

Their murders prompted national outrage, says Laura Wexler, who authored a book on the case - partly because George Dorsey was a veteran who had served in North Africa and the Pacific.

According to Joe Bell, a lawyer currently petitioning the US Supreme Court to unseal grand jury transcripts from the case, protests erupted across the country and thousands of telegrams were sent to the White House demanding accountability for the lynching.

What followed was the "most extensive federal lynching investigation in the history of the nation at the time," Wexler explains. President Harry Truman sent in the FBI, which interrogated almost 3,000 Black and white residents of Walton County during the months-long investigation.

Over 16 days in December of that year, more than 100 people testified in front of a grand jury. But despite the unprecedented time and resources put into the case, not a single resident of Walton County was indicted.

According to the EJI, out of all the lynchings committed since 1900, only one percent resulted in a perpetrator being convicted of a criminal offence.

'Veil of silence'

Despite the widespread attention the lynching received, Hope Dorsey, Patrice's sister, knew little about her relatives, George and Dorothy.

"There's been some murmurs of what happened [in the family]," says the 52-year-old who lives in North Carolina. "But we never saw anything that confirmed it."

"My mum didn't want to talk about it because she was scared about what might happen. They left this town [Monroe] and never came back."

Following lynchings, a hushed silence permeated Black and white communities.

"White people had a pact between them and understood that they were not going to tell what they knew and Black people were too afraid to speak because of fears of retaliation and reprisal," Ifill explains.

There were times, she says, when the family of a lynching victim was too fearful to even collect the remains of their loved ones. "There's no real place for the family to process the horror of what has happened to them or their loved one because the most important thing is to be silent and to be safe from reprisals," she says.

Families were "living in absolute terror" and white people involved in lynchings lived in "perpetual fear that Black people might be planning something against them," Ifill adds. "So you have this veil of silence that falls down within these affected families because they cannot speak their pain publicly."

Scattered

The Dorsey and Malcolm families fled Monroe following the lynching, eventually becoming scattered across various states, including Ohio and North Carolina. The breakup of Black families and entire communities was repeated throughout the South during this era.

After lynchings "it was not uncommon to see the relatives or descendants of the person who was lynched flee the community or for the entire Black community to leave," Boone explains. "It's not a coincidence that a lot of these cities today [sites of violence against Black communities] are now majority white spaces."

Between 1916 and 1970, more than six million African Americans relocated from the rural South to cities in the North, West and Midwest. The Great Migration, as it is known, is often framed as being driven primarily by the search for economic opportunities outside of the South, where about 90 percent of the African American population had lived.

But "a key role in the migration of [Black] people from the deep South was in response to racial terror lynchings and violence," says Boone. "And when you're forced to flee your home that carries with it a loss of income, property and resources that you can't carry with you. And it often breaks up the family ties."

As African Americans fled the South and flooded into cities like Chicago, Detroit, New York and Oakland, they were not welcomed as refugees or internally displaced people fleeing rampant and horrendous violence back home, but instead "faced job, housing and education discrimination that were perpetuated through realtors and local governments, and bolstered by federal legislation," Boone explains.

'Saying their names'

It was only when Patrice - sometimes referred to as the "historian of the [Dorsey] family" - saw an episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show in the 1990s that she understood the significance of the whispers she had overheard in her family.

On the show was Clinton Adams, a former Monroe resident who had come forward to the FBI, claiming to have witnessed the lynching as a 10-year-old child hiding in the woods.

"They were showing the Malcolms and Dorseys in their caskets. They were showing the whole story of my family," Patrice, who lives in North Carolina, recalls, her voice still reflecting the shock she felt then. "That's when it really sunk in. I remember tears coming to my eyes. I couldn't believe I was looking at my relatives."

Patrice began piecing together her family's story and went in search of her long lost relatives, separated decades earlier when they had fled Monroe in fear.

But it was not until 2005, when the Moore's Ford Movement - first spearheaded by Dr Martin Luther King Jr when he was still a student at Atlanta's Morehouse College - began organising an annual re-enactment of the lynching that the estranged families started to find each other.

According to Tyrone Brooks, a veteran of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and chairman of the Moore's Ford Movement, the re-enactments, which are held every year on July 25 - the anniversary of the lynching - are aimed at making "sure America never forgets that lynchings were a common strategy to suppress, intimidate and kill people in this country - and we won't allow America to hide from this past."

For the Dorseys and Malcolms, the re-enactments also serve as a family reunion.

At this year's re-enactment, conversations between relatives of the victims - some of whom were meeting each other for the first time - twisted around long and complicated family trees, as they searched for their common ancestry.

"The more we talk about what happened to our ancestors, the more the word gets out," Hope explains. "Now Dorseys from Baltimore and Detroit to Louisiana and Alabama are responding to [the re-enactment], finding each other, and getting to know one another."

"The lynching broke up our family, but in our fight for recognition and remembering what happened here in Monroe, we're coming back together finally," she says. "We're saying their names and we want the world to hear it and we want the world to know what happened here."

"Our family coming back together feels like closure to us," she reflects. "We've been absent for so long, but now we're here and even teaching the young generations about what happened to the Dorseys and Malcolms and remembering the violence they faced. I feel like now since their family is here, they can finally rest peacefully because we won't let the world forget them."

'Another trophy for their wall'

Joseph Dorsey's father was the brother of George Dorsey and Dorothy Malcolm.

"I would hear my father talking about it. He would bring it up now and then," the 72-year-old recalls. "But it was mostly when he was drinking, so we didn't pay much attention. I think that pain stayed with him throughout his life."

Joseph, who lives in Georgia, says it was not until he grew older that he started to reflect more on his father's stories about the murders. "I started to see all that stuff for myself. They tell you which doors you can walk through and which bathrooms and water fountains you can use," he says of segregation.

"We lived through all that so our uncle's story was something that we, ourselves, were living through."

Joseph's brother, 69-year-old George, who was named after his slain uncle, did not know about his relatives' murders until he was at least in his 40s, "if not older," he says, adding that he had not met his father until he was 13 years old.

The first time George visited his aunt and uncle's gravesite was in 1999, when the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee arranged for George Dorsey to receive military honours, which included a flyover by a World War II plane, during a ceremony in Monroe.

"We're lucky we even know their names," George says. "They're many [Black] people who were killed and never identified. No one knows what happened to them or who they were."

According to the EJI, hundreds of lynching victims' names are still unknown because newspaper reports at the time failed to publish them.

"It's awful sometimes how life is," says George, who also resides in Georgia. "But what's done is done and that's how I look at it. They just kill Black people like deer and there's nothing anyone's going to do about it. It's just another trophy for their wall. And it will keep going on that way because they keep getting away with it."

"Justice will only come when he [Jesus Christ] comes back," he reflects. "That's when we'll see some justice. On judgement day all of those people will get it. And if justice comes before then it will shock me to death."

'A lot of fear'

Several miles from the gravestone of George and Dorothy lies another tombstone, propped atop the more recently dug grave of Lynn McKinley Jackson, a 23-year-old army private and native of Monroe, whose decomposing body was found hanging from a pine tree in the woods outside Social Circle, a city in Walton County, in 1981.

A few months after his body was found, a jury ruled Jackson's death a suicide, even though he would have had to climb a pine tree, with no branches, for 20 feet (six metres) straight to reach the branch he was found hanging from. Many residents and activists are convinced he was killed.

Jackson's hanging remains still cast a shadow over Walton County, where street signs continue to bear the names of some of those suspected of having fired the bullets into the Dorseys and Malcolms more than seven decades ago.

"These lynchings tell us why our current reality is the way it is," says 30-year-old BreAnn Robinson, a resident of Monroe and one of the founders of FORM, a local group established last year to push for reconciliation and transformative justice in Monroe.

"You can clearly see where the Black community starts and ends and where the white community starts and ends," she explains. "There's a clear line drawn and you can see the different socioeconomic statuses between the white and Black communities very clearly."

"Growing up here, there was a lot of fear," Robinson adds.

In Monroe, African Americans make up about 42 percent of the population, but there are only two Black city council members and all but one of the businesses in Monroe's brick-layered downtown business district are white-owned, says Robinson.

A 'direct descendant of lynching'

But it is not just in Monroe that the legacy of lynching continues to reverberate; communities across the US are haunted by it.

According to Boone, the criminal justice system replaced the white vigilantes as a central tool for suppressing the civil, political and economic rights of Black people.

In response to the worsening public image of Southern states, law enforcement and elected state officials began negotiating with the white mobs to hold state-sanctioned public executions as a way of mitigating the violence while still appeasing the white mobs, Boone says.

According to the EJI, northern states had abolished public executions by 1850, but some Southern states continued the practice until 1938, and at times succeeded in forcing public hangings even where it was illegal.

As early as the 1920s, the EJI says Southern legislators "shifted to capital punishment so that the legal and ostensibly unbiased court proceedings could serve the same purpose as vigilante violence: satisfying the lust for revenge".

By 1915 court-ordered executions outnumbered lynchings in Southern states for the first time, while two-thirds of those executed in the 1930s were Black, according to the EJI. Although the African American population of the South fell to 22 percent between 1910 and 1950, Black people still constituted 75 percent of those executed in the South during that period.

The EJI considers the death penalty in the US to be a "direct descendant of lynching". While only 13 percent of the country's population is African American, more than 42 percent of those on death row and 34 percent of those executed are Black. In Georgia, someone convicted of killing a white person is 17 times more likely to be executed than someone convicted of killing a Black person.

"The states with the highest numbers of documented racial terror lynchings are also the states with the highest number of death sentences and executions today," says Boone.

"These systems are rooted in the myths of racial differences and the idea that Black people are inferior, dangerous or criminal," she explains. "These myths were created to justify centuries of enslavement, where Black people were treated as property and looked at as less than human. And that's something that has lived on for generations."

The case of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot to death earlier this year while jogging in his neighbourhood outside Brunswick, Georgia, sent a terrifying, but all-too-familiar, tremor through Black communities. Two white men, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who killed Arbery after pursuing him in their pickup truck, were not arrested until months after the murder - and then only after a video of the incident went viral and national outrage erupted.

From police killings to vigilantism, "all of that is anchored in this history of racism and how we devalue and dehumanise Black people, and the lack of accountability that we continue to see when violence is carried out on Black people in this country," says Boone.

'The root of all of this'

Despite being raised in Walton County, Robinson did not learn of the mass lynching that took place there until 2017, when she stumbled upon a flier for the annual re-enactment. "I was so shocked," she recalls. "I was raised here. I went to school here and studied history here. My family is from here. And I had never heard about it."

"It was a big eye-opener for me. There was a huge investigation, even the president got involved. And no one decided that we should be taught this? It showed me that those in power do not care about the Black community."

"I then decided to dig deeper, learn more, and understand why this veil of oppression is still hanging over this city," she adds. "And what I've learned is that a lot of those individuals who were part of the lynching, their families owned a lot of land and they had a lot of power. And all of these families are still in power to this day."

According to Robinson, most of the Black community in Monroe "still doesn't like to talk about the Moore's Ford lynching because they're still scared". But some white residents, who are descendants of suspected lynchers, have stepped forward to participate in FORM's activities. "They feel ashamed for what their relatives did and they want to say this isn't who they are," she explains.

Robinson, along with the rest of FORM's members, is advocating for the removal of Walton County's Confederate monument and the erection of a central memorial for the Dorseys and Malcolms, as well as for July 25 to be declared a city-wide day of mourning. Activists around the country have also advocated for reparations for families affected by lynchings.

"This is our history and justice still hasn't been served," Robinson reflects. "Think about all the families who still haven't received justice for their children brutally killed by police or white vigilantes. These lynchings are the root of all this. If we let this history die, then they win. And since it's not written in our history books, it's our responsibility to make sure this country doesn't forget."

Boone believes that efforts to document or memorialise victims of lynchings are "a way of adding to the work of truth-telling, which is desperately needed in this country".

"Our goal should be about truth and justice. We need to really recognise and confront the truth of our past," she explains.

The EJI opened The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery Alabama in 2018, along with the country's first national memorial to the thousands of African Americans killed by white mobs during the era of lynching.

Todd Dorsey, Patrice and Hope's brother, is still waiting for the day he feels closure for the massacre of his relatives on Moore's Ford Bridge.

"We need something, even if it's an official recognition or an apology," the 60-year-old says. "These were human beings and we want that to be recognised. There are memorials for Confederate soldiers and even the names of those men who killed them are still on Monroe's street signs, but our relatives' names are only written in the cemeteries.

"But we're still here," he adds. "We're the remnants. We're the seeds of our ancestors. Back then, people were too scared to speak, but now we're here and we'll always fight until we get justice for them."

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An American lynching: 'I could hear their screams'

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How a mass lynching and the people re-enacting it are forcing the US to confront the truth of its past and its present. Monroe, Georgia - A Confederate monument - a musket-strapped soldier perched atop a marble base - stands tall in the grounds of the historic Walton County courthouse in the city of Monroe, about an hour east of Atlanta, Georgia.

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Civil Rights Impact Today- By Rylee Robson

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Civil Rights Impact Today- By Rylee Robson

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When reading “ PBS Civil Rights Today,” by Jenkins, Alan interviewed Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006, he told the audience about how much progress we’ve made but how much progress we still need to make for inequality in our society. Many civil rights movements are working to address and improve inequalities in our communities. These movements of the African-Americans have also helped other groups of people look for justice among their countries, so the effect of civil rights back them and today is impacting our whole world by helping people stand up for their rights/life. Then civil rights today are impacting our communities as well and we need to work on improving them as well. Alan Jenkins says, “That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases.” He also states that, “But we all have an opportunity to step outside of them and make sure we're treating people the way we want to be treated.” This shows that if we look at all races the same and step aside from our own biases that we will improve upon racial judgements and make our society better. So by working better our society will be happier and ready for more opportunities. There are still areas where we have made great progress but there are still areas that are waiting for great improvements. So now maybe more than ever it is important for Americans to reassess the struggle for inequality and improve upon it.
When reading the article it brought me more to my attention about what happens and that we need to be more aware of what people with inequality go through. I agree with the author because I believe that all people should be treated equally and that if we all work together we can overcome the problems facing us, inequality and racism. I have seen people who are of a different race be made fun of and I think that it is not fair and should not be happening. I was surprised when reading about hurricane Katrina and how it was proved to be  modern racism. Even though it was little it still was inequality and whites over blacks. This article has sparked my mind for more questions, like when do they think it will be fully resolved?, Will it ever be fully resolved?, or What would be the most effective method to help inequality?. All of these questions have started in my mind from reading the text. I decided to read this article in general because it is a trustworthy source and looked interesting. The text when you read it was very formal and provided good information about real life and accurate issues of today. So overall I enjoyed reading the article because it sparked my mind and was interesting to me.

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Modern Civil Rights Issues Mariella Hernandez

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Modern Civil Rights Issues Mariella Hernandez

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I read the article, “Black Lives Matter: The 21st Century Civil Rights Movement?”. by Meghan Gallagher, member of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, October 12, 2018. This article focused on the disparities in police brutality black people face and gave a brief history of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as providing a comparison between white and black incarceration rates. I learned that black people face a lot of racial injustice in the criminal justice system. I also learned that the Black Lives Matter movement started in 2013 when Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teen was fatally shot by police officer George Zimmerman.

It surprised me how many instances of racism, violence, and brutality are committed against black people. I connected this injustice in the government with others, like how minorities often have a lower credit score because of lending policies that favored white borrowers and the fewer financial services minorities often have access to. It made me wonder how there are so many blatantly racist people in important positions, and what the black community would look like today if they were treated equally from the very beginning. That train of thought reminded me of this quote from Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”.

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I read an article called "America's Most Infamous Hate Group: The KKK." When I was reading the article I felt disgusted about the way black people were treated. The KKK were trying to prevent the blacks from doing literally everything. They wouldn't let the black people and even Republicans vote. That's because they wanted to keep the white Democrat rule in the Southern states. To help prevent the blacks and Republicans from voting, they violently intimidated voters on their way to the polls during election season.
Another article I read was called "https://cwnc.omeka.chass.ncsu.edu/exhibits/show/kkk-methods/victims-of-violence/black-victims-of-violence ." In this article, it talks about how many black people were beaten and killed. For example, in Wayne county on August 2, 1866, four white men brutally a free man named Barry Lewes, a discharged solider. On February 18, 1867 in Wake county, a white man assaulted a black man, but didn't have any charges pressed against him. There was one case in Sanford county on April 26, 1867, unknown parties of white men murdered a black man named John Washington and his daughter. The white group was never found or prosecuted. Lastly, in Wake county later in the same year, six white men murdered a black man. Finally, the group was arrested and got sent to jail. Most of the white men were never caught, they were most likely to be in the KKK, wearing disguises to keep from being identified.
Things kept getting worse and worse. They members of the KKK group would go after black women as well. They would both assault and rape black women. For example, a disguised group had assaulted a freed woman named Frances Gilmore. They assaulted her by whipping and beating her, took of her clothes to be whipped by a board, and cut multiple times with a knife. No one was able to identify her attackers due to their disguises, and yet again, no arrests were made. The Klans use of sexualized violence of men and women show their willingness to assert their social authority over blacks, by any means necessary.

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The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands perhaps kept the best records of outrages committed on blacks by whites. Whether the accused whites were a part of white supremacist groups or not, the data collected from North Carolina shows a terrifying and violent time in its history. In multiple counties, unknown groups of white men burned barns, houses, and even a schoolhouse for African American children. In one county, eight houses belonging to freedmen were burned to the ground, and the culprits were never caught. Beatings, however, were the most common forms of violence. In Wayne county on August 2, 1866, four white men brutally beat a freedman named Barry Lewes, a discharged soldier. On February 18, 1867 in Wake county, a white man assaulted a black man, but was acquitted of all charges. Sometimes the outcomes resulted in a case being diverted to civil authorities, but often no other information was taken on whether the perpetrators were punished or not. One case in Sanford county on April 26, 1867, unknown parties of white men murdered a black man named John Washington and his daughter (Freedmen's Bureau). They were never caught or prosecuted. But in Wake county later in the same year, six white men murdered a black man and they were arrested and sent to jail. Many of the unknown white men were never caught, and they were likely from white supremacist groups like the KKK, as some wore disguises in order to keep from being identified.

The Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States helped put together a historiography about brutal violence that took place in North Carolina during Reconstruction. One piece of testimony shows the brutality that whites were willing to exert on people who shared different beliefs. A newspaper editor from Rutherford county, J.B. Carpenter, told the superior court that reports of outrages were often sent to him. Mostly the outrages tended to be whippings, but beatings and attempted murders often happened as well. A black man named Aaron Biggerstaff was whipped twice by a group of disguised white men. Biggerstaff identified one of the horses the attackers rode on as being definitely that of the Cleveland county Sheriff. On his way to give testimony to the United States Commissioner about these attacks he was once again beaten by the perpetrators. The men were recognized this time, Biggerstaff and his family identified them and they were arrested ( Report 19). Sometimes the groups of white men were identified and prosecuted, but unfortunately that outcome was few and far between.

The violence conducted by the Klan was often sexualized in nature. Although the Klan openly stated their reason for existing was to protect white women from black men, some had no moral qualms about their members sexually abusing or mutilating black men and women in order to show their authority. Often, Klan members would both assault and rape black women (Hodes 66). An example of sexualized violence was given in by the U.S. Commissioner from Raleigh, A. Webster Shaffer, concerning a freed woman named Frances Gilmore. A group of disguised attackers had assaulted her by whipping and beating her, then taking her clothes off to be whipped with a board, and finally forcibly having her pubic hair burned off before she was cut multiple times with a knife ( Report 36-37). Gilmore was unable to identify her attackers due to their disguises, and no arrests were ever made. Another example of sexualized violence was committed on a black man who, because of a simple labor conflict, was forced to cut up his genitals with a knife (Hodes 65). The Klans use of sexualized violence on women and men shows their willingness to assert their social authority over blacks, by any means necessary.

The testimony of J.B. Carpenter goes on to state that the election of 1870 had taken place recently and the result was a Republican majority. Carpenter noted that the amount of outrages went up exponentially after the election. He also noted that the victims of violence were all Republicans, and all attacks were committed by men in disguises ( Report 26). Other questions posed to Mr. Carpenter about politics in Rutherford county show the close division of Republican and Democratic voters in that county, which resulted in high Klan activity for the region. Carpenter states that Republicans had the majority vote by two or three hundred people. One of the questions for Mr. Carpenter asked if the hundreds of whippings that were reported in the county had anything to do with political beliefs and the election. Carpenter responded by saying that every single person who reported being whipped had said their attackers told them they were being whipped because they were Republican and that their attackers urged them to not continue voting Republican. Testimony from a railroad contractor named William R. Howle describes the KKK threatening him about his voting rights. Howle states that the KKK threatened him "several times" and was told to "leave the state and not interfere with North Carolina politics." ( Report 56). The Klan seemed willing to use whatever means necessary to regain political dominance of the South, even if that meant instilling terror via sexual abuse.

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The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands perhaps kept the best records of outrages committed on blacks by whites. Whether the accused whites were a part of white supremacist groups or not, the data collected from North Carolina shows a terrifying and violent time in its history.

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According to “PBS Civil Rights Today," by Alan Jenkins, an interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006, there is still lots of discrimination in our society today. The government isn’t considering black communities in emergency situations. For example, when Hurricane Katrina hit, the places it ruined the most, were black neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were the poorest, farthest away from good jobs and schools, and most vulnerable to flooding and destruction. This shows that the government doesn’t care about these neighborhoods and purposely made them vulnerable.

“Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Our country hasn't yet fulfilled that promise.” The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity, but it’s difficult to find opportunity in an unequal society. There are some things that we can do to improve our own community such as promising ourselves to live up to the opportunities in our own lives and reaching out to important speakers to evaluate and spread awareness about the situation. “We've made a huge amount of progress but we still have a long way to go.” Now is a good time for America to reinvest in the struggle for overcoming inequality and discrimination.

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I read the article Named "PBS Civil Rights Today" By Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006. It was about how there are still people working for civil rights today. Alan Jenkins says that when there is a natural disaster or something that the government does not care about the lower-income areas and only cares for the higher-class people. He also talks just not only about blacks but also about Latinos and other immigrants.

He also states that civil rights are just not a thing in the United States. He had traveled over to India and other countries over there and heard them singing the same song that MLK sang. He asked them why they were singing those songs and they said that they were looking for equal rights too. So that means that the civil rights movement has moved from the us to all over the world. So that means that there are more people that are being discriminated against than some people may think.

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Current Civil Right Inequalities- Stella Largent

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Current Civil Right Inequalities- Stella Largent

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According to “PBS civil rights today” by Alan Jenkins there is still a lot of discrimination that exists today. This article was an interview by Maria Daniels in WGBH Boston ,July 2006. This article talked a lot about how today lots of black communities are in the most vulnerable places. Not just this but Black communities were also purposely made to be the farthest away from good jobs, schools, hospitals, and are the hardest places to get out of in case of emergencies. An example of this is how during Hurricane Katrina these communities were the ones that got hit the hardest of all of them.

This is all extremely unfair to these people and communities. There are some modern civil right movements that are trying to change this and expand opportunity so nothing like what happened during Hurricane Katrina happens again. Although these issues are not always seen they are still very important and have a big impact on our community. There has been a lot of progress made over this subject but there is still a long way to go to make it how it should be.

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Summary & Response - How have civil rights changed over the century?

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Summary & Response - How have civil rights changed over the century?

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Share your learning from your research about civil rights and/or the history of lynchings by completing the following in your post:

1. Create your own unique title in the subject line, followed by your first name.

2. Reference and hyperlink the text you read by identifying the TAG ("Title," Author, Genre) and the date of publication. (e.g. In the article entitled “Remember to Capitalize Your Title” by FirstName LastName on Date,… or According to “Remember to Capitalize Your Title” by FirstName LastName on Date, ...)

3. Compose a summary ¶ of each text in order to share the main points about your topic with your readers.

4. Then compose your response ¶ (your analytical commentary) by explaining the conversation you had with your text (the thought journey you went on) during your reading. This should include connections you made between what you have learned about the Civil Rights Era of the mid-1900s and what is going on today.

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Discrimination Still Exists - Student First Name Only

I read an article entitled "PBS Civil Rights Today," by Alan Jenkins, which was from an interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006. From this article, I learned that black communities are still discriminated against to this day. Black communities were purposefully made to be farther away from good jobs, schools, hospitals, and the hardest to get out in case of emergency. When major life events happen, they often are the last to get help. For instance, Hurricane Katrina ruined these communities more than white communities.

I think this is extremely unfair. This makes me think of other news events I have heard about where communities made of mostly POC don't get the financial support they need to have things like normal, safe daily utilities, but communities that are mostly white get their utilities fixed right away.  I think that these communities should be as good as the white communities that get access to all of the things they need. And laws should change to help this happen.

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Eyes on the Prize | Article

Alan Jenkins is the executive director and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization that works to expand opportunity in America through research, communications, and advocacy. His career has taken him to the Ford Foundation as Director of Human Rights; to the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant to the Solicitor General; and to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as Associate Counsel. In his current role he works with a range of social justice groups to expand opportunity in America.

by Alan Jenkins

What is the state of civil and human rights today? We've made a huge amount of progress but we still have a long way to go. There's very little of the kind of formal bigotry and segregation that we saw in Eyes on the Prize, but there's still a lot of discrimination in our society, unfortunately.

Addressing Inequities Today
The modern civil rights movement is working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society. Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Our country hasn't yet fulfilled that promise.

Hurricane Katrina provides a good example. What it revealed is that there's still significant racial inequality and desperate poverty in America. A lot of that springs from discrimination from long ago that concentrated black people in the poorest neighborhoods - the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to flooding, that are farthest from good jobs, schools and hospitals, and the hardest to get out of with transportation in an emergency. So those were the people who were hardest hit when Katrina struck. African American communities were not thought of by our government in the same way as more affluent or white communities.

The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity so that kind of thing doesn't happen again. It's important to determine what's different now compared to the Eyes era. We've got to eradicate the more subtle manifestations of racial bias in our society that go back to those earlier times.

The Movement's Impact
The African American civil rights movement has inspired a lot of other groups that have suffered injustices. One example that we saw recently was the immigrant rights demonstrations around the country. Immigrants' assertion that "we too are America" was inspiring, and very much in the spirit of the civil rights movement. In addition, there's been, since the late Sixties, a powerful Latino civil rights movement, that included the farm workers' movement, and includes organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, patterned on the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund. The women's rights movement was inspired in part by the African American civil rights movement. Certainly the immigrant rights movement, and the gay rights movement as well. Those are just a few examples. Dynamic people in those communities have led the movements, but the African American civil rights movement provides a powerful template for activism.

The impact of the civil rights movement has spread throughout the world. I've met with people in India - Dalits, who are the former "untouchable" caste. What's exciting is that Martin Luther Kinglearned nonviolent strategies from Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, so it's kind of a full circle. When I traveled to India I met activists who were singing "We Shall Overcome" - the touchstone song of the American civil rights movement - in Hindi, and talked about how they had gotten inspiration from the American civil rights movement for their own struggle to achieve rights in Indian society. And there are many more examples worldwide.

Improving Our Own Communities
The first thing that people can do to improve things around them is to make sure that we live up to the promise of opportunity in our own lives. That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases. We all carry around biases and stereotypes in our heads, and that's a part of being human. But we all have an opportunity to step outside of them and make sure we're treating people the way we want to be treated.

The second thing is to be part of making our society more equal. That could mean calling up your local TV station and either complementing reporting they're doing, or asking them why they aren't doing more to expose inequality and highlight solutions. Write letters to the editor - including writing to your school newspaper - about how issues of opportunity are playing out in your community and what you can do about it.

The Implicit Association Test on race is an online test that you can take on Harvard University's Web site. It's a fascinating way to see biases you might unknowingly have. The test flashes up images of people from a variety of racial groups, and pairs them with negative and positive words. It's designed to demonstrate that everyone carries around implicit biases to some degree. It's a very interesting test. Of course, there is a difference between the Bull Connors - the hateful racists - and the rest of us, who are people of good will, but we don't always recognize the stereotypes we carry around with us.

What does implicit or subconscious bias mean for police officers who have a split second to make a decision? What does it mean for school admissions officers or others making a decision that affects someone's direction in life? The question for people to ask themselves is, if this person looked different, would I make the same decision?

Civil Rights Today
I think we're at a crossroads now for opportunity. There are some areas where we've made great progress. For example, African American women have made the most progress of any group in college attendance - a remarkable success story. But in many other areas America is in real trouble. Great inequality and discrimination still exist in our school systems, our criminal justice system, and other aspects of our lives. Research shows, for example, the need to address the employment and housing discrimination that still exist. Nearly one out of every four African Americans seeking housing experience discrimination. That's happening today. And yet there's very little written about it - people are really unaware that that's the case. We find similar levels of discrimination in employment statistics.

People interested in finding out more can read a report on our web site called The State of Opportunity in America. It explores how we're doing as a nation in achieving opportunity for all, in terms of equality, economic security, and more.

It's a very important time now for America to reinvest in that struggle for overcoming inequality and discrimination. They are really contrary to our values as a country.

Source: Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006.

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Civil Rights Today | American Experience | PBS

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In 2006, American Expereince spoke to Alan Jenkins about the civil rights movement as it entered the twenty-first century.

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History of Lynching -Student First Name Only

In the article titled, “Vile US History of Lynching of People of Color,” written by Russel  Contreras on June 15, 2020, it discusses the history of lynching in America. In the article it discusses how lynching started with native Americans and black slaves. When white people first came to the country, people of all races were lynched. Towards the 1800’s it became specifically racist and black people and Mexican Americans were treated horribly. They were lynched and burned with their killers having no criminal punishment.

This article has helped me understand how horrible black people were treated during this time in America. In fact, as I read, I  learned there was much more to a lynching than "just" a hanging. It also included physical torment and brutal torture. They even made postcards of many lynching photos with racist poems on them. Through all of this, the biggest connection I made with this article is that we white people in America, especially during our current time period, have experienced a privileged life, unlike black people.  Because of this, I believe schools need to go further in depth on this topic because this is something generations ahead need to learn so we do not repeat it.

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RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) - The U.S. Congress is once again at an impasse over a widely backed bill to designate lynching as a federal hate crime. And as in previous attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation, the proposal is being blocked by a white southern representative this time, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky.

Merriam-Webster defines lynching as "to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission." Throughout American history, lynching has been used as a tool of terror against people of color to maintain racist social orders and prevent people of color from voting, asserting human rights or seeking employment. Black, Native American and Mexican American activists have sought for more than a century for federal legislation aimed at ending the practice and imposing harsh penalties for it.

Here's a look at how lynching evolved in the U.S. as populations of color grew and demanded civil rights:

BEGINNINGS

Almost as soon as European settlers came to the present-day United States, white mobs attacked peaceful Native American villages. Black slaves who revolted faced death and, at times, slave owners and overseers, could kill a slave without fear of much punishment.

Though debated, some historians say the country's first lynching took place in St. Louis.

On April 28, 1836, Francis McIntosh, a free black steward, disembarked of the steamboat Flora and onto a levee, according to "The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States" by Walter Johnson. He walked into town but was overtaken by two sailors running from the police. Deputy Sheriff George Hammons and Deputy Constable William Mull abandoned their chase of the sailors and took an innocent McIntosh into custody. He was eventually burned to death. Two years later, a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln denounced McIntosh's lynching and called it a threat to the Republic.

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JIM CROW ERA

Following Reconstruction and the withdraw of federal troops from the American South, newly freed black slaves fell victim to lynchings by white mobs who blamed them for the South's economic troubles. A paramilitary group known as the Ku Klux Klan attracted former Confederate soldiers who attacked African Americans. In 1866, a dispute between white and black Civil War ex-soldiers in Memphis, Tennessee, resulted in blacks' lynchings by white mobs and police. Two months later, a white mob lynched 37 blacks attending a suffrage convention in New Orleans.

States in the former Confederacy passed laws preventing black men from voting and used the threat of lynching to halt objections. But lynchings also were used to enforce racial segregation and prevent African American economic advancement.

Often black men and women were taken from their homes at night and beaten before public lynchings. From 1882 to 1968, more than 4,700 lynchings were recorded in the U.S., according to the NAACP, the oldest civil rights group in the country founded in response to lynchings. About 70% of those lynched were black.

Photos of blacks being lynched later appeared on postcards with racist poems or words. The images often included a black mutilated body hanging from a tree while smiling whites, sometimes with children, looked at the corpse.

THE WEST

Mexican Americans after the U.S. Civil War became victims of lynching by white mobs in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and California as white settlers tried to impose their own racist social order in land taken from Mexico. In towns, villages, and cities in the West, Mexican Americans were subjected to torture, lynchings and other violence at the hands of white mobs and law enforcement agencies such as the Texas Rangers. Historians say that from 1910 to 1920, an estimated 5,000 people of Mexican descent were killed or vanished in the U.S.

Often the violence was so barbaric it attracted the attention of newspapers abroad and the fledgling NAACP.

Asian Americans also faced lynchings in California. Jean Pfaelzer's 2008 book "Driven Out: The Forgotten War against Chinese Americans" documents from 1848 into the 20th Century how lawless white mobs attacked Chinese miners and workers in California and the Pacific Northwest in violent acts of ethnic cleansing. If the victims weren't forcibly loaded onto railroad cars, they were lynched.

In 1930, Robert B. Martin, a local lumber worker and Filipino veteran of World War I, was found hanging in a tree in Susanville, California. His crime: he had been seen talking to white women.

FIGHTING BACK

Journalist Ida B. Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the late 1800s by writing about murdered African Americans, even risking her life by traveling to the South to investigate stories. She brought her campaign to the White House in 1898 and called for President William McKinley to make reforms.

Between 1920 and 1938, the NAACP flew a flag outside its New York City headquarters every time it received another lynching report. Meanwhile, the group tried to seek state and federal anti-lynching legislation - proposals that always faced fierce opposition from politicians from the American South.

In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group, opened the nation's first memorial and museum to lynching victims. The organization said 650,000 people have visited the memorial and museum since the sites opened.

Last month, an online video emerged showing the February 23 shooting death of unarmed 25-year-old black man Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia by two white assailants. Rev. James Woodall, state president of the Georgia NAACP, called the unprovoked killing of Arbery, who was jogging, a "modern-day lynching."

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Associated Press writer Russell Contreras is a member of the AP's race and ethnicity team. Follow Contreras on Twitter at http://twitter.com/russcontreras

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AP Explains: Vile US history of lynching of people of color

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RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) - The U.S. Congress is once again at an impasse over a widely backed bill to designate lynching as a federal hate crime. And as in previous attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation, the proposal is being blocked by a white southern representative this time, U.S. Sen.