African Americans Role In Overcoming Oppression

In almost every form, oppression is never healthy for the ones who are being oppressed. The oppressors are treated cruelly and unjust and have no control over the situations that they are put in. But even in this oppression, the oppressed can benefit from it and acquire more power and strength so that they can overcome the oppression. This power and strength can assist with bringing together the person’s group, potential allies outside of their group, and the oppressed themselves. Usually, instead of being a single person who is oppressed, it is a group of people, such as African Americans for example. They are one of the most common races to be discriminated against just because of their skin color. Even though they have been discriminated against for throughout our history, African Americans have mainly overcome this. The race as a whole came together during the times that they were put down, which helped them to become stronger, and eventually lead them to receiving more rights. In the 1800’s, African Americans would organize slave revolts against their slaveholders to show them that they are not weak. This would frighten the slaveholders and it gave the slaves more recognition than just being a slave. The revolts show that when they were treated …show more content…
There were a group of people, blacks and whites, in the 1960’s called Freedom Riders who rode buses into the segregated sections of the south. They did this to prove that segregation was not needed and that blacks are just the same as whites. These white Freedom Riders stood up for what they believed in and tried to help these African Americans gain their rights, all because of the power and strength that they were showing them. These African Americans were continually having to protect themselves and eventually, they persuaded the minds of some whites that the way they were being treated was