African American Studies Essay Example for Free

African American Studies EssayThe three topics I have picked for this reaction paper are Hurricane Katrina, The outpouring Of baleful seawall Street And Gangs. Ive picked these topics because I believe that to this day everything is still about being in control, racism and a touch of slavery which leads to gangs. Hurricane Karina was the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. Most notable in media coverage were the catastrophic effects on the city of New Orleans, La. , and coastal Mississippi. Criticism of the federal, state and local anesthetic governments reaction to the storm was widespread.The bombing of morose Wall Street community was the sight of a happy, sloshed Black community but was too much for angry, jealous Whites in Tulsa, Okla. , in 1921, a saturnine rumor was enough to spark a mass riot that left hundreds of African Americans dead, and a belt ammunition of black homes and business burn down to the ground. The saddest fact associated with this historic atrocity is that the U. S government and local media were complicit in the death and destruction. Gangs the word gang comes from gonge a term meaning a journey, but later referring to a gonge of sailors in the fifteenth century.Gangs originally began in the 1800s which meant kids of the highroad. But US had other predecessors than unsupervised street urchins. There were four kinds of gangs which were predecessors of the street gangs of today 1. Secret Societies, 2. Gangs of outlaws and in the Wild West, 3. Racist like the Ku Klux Klan, and 4. suffrage Gangs tied mainly to the Democratic Party in large cities. Many gangs if armed men were racially mortivated. Racial tensions in the cities like New York were constant, and racist conflict was almost everywhere more knock-down-and-drag-out than nativism.. On May 31. 921 a nineteen year old Black male accidentally stumbled on a bumpy elevator and bumped into a seventeen year old White elevato r slattern who screamed.The frightened young small-arm was seen running from the elevator by a group of Whites and by the good afternoon the Tulsa Tribune reported that the girl had been raped. Despite the girls denial of any wrong doing, the young man was arrested and a large mob of 2000 White men came to the jail to lynch the prisoner. With a defenseless Black community before them, the whiten mob advanced to the greenwood district where they first looted and then burned down all Black business, homes, and churches.Any black resisters were shot and thrown in fires. Thats how it became The Bombing of Black Wall Street. It all comes to whats going on now with, if you are in a gang you cant go in one neighborhood if you are not affiliated with that neighborhood gang, just like back in then when blacks wasnt allowed in white people areas or if blacks were allowed, they were segregated. After the Tulsa riot, White inhabitants tried to buy the Black property and force the Black peopl e out of town.No Tulsa bank or leading institution would make loans in the riot-marred Greenwood district, and the city refused all outside assistance. However, racial pride and self determination would not permit the Greenwood owners to sell. Since African Americans could uncomplete live among Whites as equals nor patronize White business in Tulsa, Blacks had to develop a completely give away business and community, which soon became prosperous and legendary. Black dollars invested in black community also produced self-pride, self sufficiency, and self-determination.