First of all, the Ewell family takes Tom advantage of. He is accused that he rapes and harms Mayella who is Mr. Bob Ewell’s daughter. As Mayella says, “That nigger yonder took advantage of me an’ if you fine fancy gentlemen don’t wanta do nothing’ about it then you’re all yellow stinkin’ cowards” (Lee 188). This situation shows that black people in that period of time has no right in the same level as white people. If they get too close to white people as Tom Robinson does, it would bring their lives into disaster.
Many nativist and anti-radical sentiments were apparent in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants, were arrested for the murder of the paymaster and the guard of a South Briantree, Massachusetts shoe factory. They were also charged with robbing the shoe factory of $17,776.51 on that April 15th, 1920 night. Sacco and Vanzetti were known anarchists and during their prosecution harped on their radicalism. The judge in their case harbored negative sentiments towards the two men, because of his own conservative Yankee Republican standing.
At the start of his second term of presidency, Jackson vetoed the charter of the second bank. In his veto statement he justified his reasoning as claiming the bank to be favoring the wealthy and not supportive of the rights of the common man. He also declared the recharter unconstitutional, saying that the federal government did not have the authority to establish an institution that would not equally benefit citizens. The bank veto can be seen as one of the most democratic measures Andrew Jackson took during his presidency to enstill the idea of himself as a representative of all people. The veto is important because it decentralized the bank system but because it is an example of challenging the constitution and the president’s ability to veto, which concentrates more power in the executive branch fo the government so that there is limited influence by the elite and
They knew how it felt to be the victim of random, useless, careless murderous acts. This can be backed up by the lynching’s that had happened during the 1880s all the way through the middle of the twentieth century. Hobbs does a great job in making the reader realize what took place at those dark times. In the section Hobbs writes about lynching in South America, where Florida led all southern states with the most lynchings. Lynching’s began as “type of vigilante justice”, then turned into a cruel way to torture blacks and the African American
Nineteenth-century populists could be seen as heirs of these Jacksonian Democrats. Both the democrats and the populists shared many of the same ideas with respect to overall objectives and specific proposals for reform. Jacksonian Democrats sought a greater amount of democracy in American government, mostly white males having the right to vote, and believed heavily in the spoils system,("To the victor belong the spoils"). Jackson established the spoils system to reform the government by removing some federal officeholders. Also, he gave elected officials the right to choose their own followers to public office.
The KKK quickly adopted violent methods. The increase in murders finally resulted in a backlash among Southern elites who viewed the Klan's excesses as an excuse for federal troops to continue occupation. The organization declined from 1868 to 1870 and was destroyed by President Ulysses S. Grant's prosecution and enforcement under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. In 1915, the second Klan was founded, it preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Some local groups took part in lynchings, attacks on private houses and public property, and other violent activities.
The democratic system found in the United States is heavily slanted to the majority; their convictions are often implemented in legislation and used as the standard by which things are measured. Henry David Thoreau argues in “Civil Disobedience” that majorities are not right simply by virtue of being the majority. Thoreau clearly favors the individual and his convictions when he claims that “if a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man” (Thoreau). As Thoreau’s claims idealize the individual they also diminish the role of the government. Similar progressions can be found in Antigone, penned by Sophocles centuries earlier.
During the years that lead to the United States Civil War, the embroilment over slavery became not only a social controversy, but also a legal and political one. Supporters, and non-supporters of slavery each looked to the American constitution as well as the predominant culture of the time for direction in handling this matter. One person whom established their landmark works on this was Frederick Douglas, an emancipated slave, who fought relentlessly for the abolishment of slavery. In 1852, Frederick Douglas was allowed to speak his thoughts at the July 4th celebration. In his speech, he made it known that he despised the treatment of the Black slaves, as well as the irony and hypocrisy that followed.
No matter what one’s ideology is, some will blame a chamber of Congress, the other will blame the White House. It is clear that both used the proletariat masses as hostages to make the other side to capitulate because of their unnecessary suffering because of their willingness to throw a wrench in the cogs of the federal Government. In this day and age, partisan politics is just as much as a societal scourge as racism, sexism and other types of prejudicial strife. It is seemingly that the Founding Fathers intended to use a form of conflict theory that would keep American society in check. What has been called, “Checks and Balances” is indeed a form of conflict theory.
Of course, those already in power bitterly resent this; that is why there is such a strong anti-democratic streak in wealthy conservatives and business owners. They complain that democracy allows the poor to legally steal from the rich. (Liberals counter that unregulated capitalism allows the rich to exploit and therefore steal from the poor, and taxes simply correct for that.) But democracy also works in the other direction as well. If we lived in a society where everyone was paid equally, despite their different inputs, people would surely vote to create a system of incentives and rewards.