Free Speech

11 Pages 2745 Words

peeches content at first but later agreed to change it because Blake said he had waited for a chance to speak out his thoughts his whole life. This is one example of the system using its influence to oppress the true raw views of people trying for change that is not widely accepted by people who hold political power.
Martin Luther King has given us many examples of how to run a successful organization meant for the purpose of defending our rights. M.L.K’s “let freedom ring” speech, given at the Lincoln memorial, unified the people and proclaimed him as a strong leader, which was essential in the movement. The march to the memorial was successful because there was no violence and the organizations involved worked together.
Many early protests and groups gave us examples of how to use the economic and political power of the masses to influence governmental decisions by force. Medgar Evers, who was director of the NAACP in Jackson Mississippi, called for a boycott of down town merchants. Sense a large percentage of the customers in the town were black the economy was seriously impacted by the boycott. This kind of power is important to a movement of any kind because politicians need to keep people happy to gain their votes and people in the town were not happy. Another example of this kind of power was the famous bus boycotts started when one woman refused to give up her seat on the bus. The organized boycott and system of car pooling showed that with enough supporters and someone to make the first stand policy can be swayed, in this way the boycotters got there way. Boycotts and protests are not the only way to win a battle, some groups choose to break the rules and use complete defiance as a weapon. Such a group was the freedom riders who were a group of mixed race students who rode busses together defying the rules of the time period. Even though some of the busses were attacked and firebombed (most likely by th...