Essay Database

Discrimination The struggle for social and economic equality of Black people in America has been long and slow. It is sometimes amazing that any progress has been made in the racial equality arena at all; every tentative step forward seems to be diluted by losses elsewhere. For every "Stacey Koons" that is convicted, there seems to be a Texaco executive waiting to send Blacks back to the past. Throughout the struggle for equal rights, there …

…hint of a pro-communist attitude--black or white--was unwelcome in any group with a national political agenda. We can see, then, that neither Washington's strategy of appeasement nor DuBois's plan for an elite Black intelligentsia was to become wholly successful in elevating American Blacks to a position of equality. However, perhaps it was more than the leadership of any one Black man that encouraged African Americans to demand a full measure of social and economic equality.