US Civil Rights Essays - African-American Civil Rights Movement

US Civil Rights US Civil Rights The struggle for equality for Americans of African descent continues despite significant advances made during the 1950's and 1960's. Since then, African Americans have acquired equality and desegregation. But these rights have not come easily as there was much hatred and mistreatment by many whites. With the success of the Montgomery boycott, Black leaders charted a new path for the struggle for Civil Rights. In January of 1957, southern Black ministers met and established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Rev. Martin Luther King became the first president of the organization. After conferring with the NAACP, a decision was made to follow-up on the suggestion made by A. Philip Randolph sixteen years earlier; a march on Washington to highlight the struggle for Blacks. Some twenty-five thousand people gathered during the first march seeking more Civil Rights legislation for all. Many of the protests initiated during the 1950's and 1960's were spontaneous reactions to White mistreatment. One such incident occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina when a black student was refused service at a bus terminal lunch counter. After the incident, Joseph McNeil and three other students decided to go to the local Woolworth store and remain there until they were served. The waitress refused to serve them, so the four young men just sat there until they were arrested. Each day, the protesters would return and grow in numbers and as such many were arrested. This was one of the first examples of non-violent civil disobedience. Black adults soon joined in, and a boycott of downtown area stores began. When many of the stores were near financial ruin, the decision was made to break the tradition and desegregate the lunch counters. When the success of the boycott spread around the country, other Black students spontaneously formed organizations to initiate similar non-violent protests around the country. In October of 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed. Future Washington DC mayor Marion Barry was the first chairperson of the organization. Students led protests that were showing up in virtually every city in the South. As the protesters grew in numbers, so did the violence that was perpetrated against them. Throughout the South, Blacks were still in the majority, but had absolutely no political power. Black leaders knew that the key to passage towards any effective civil rights legislation would rely on the ability to vote. To date, White politicians and White supremacist groups had been fairly successful in keeping the Black voter rolls to a minimum. The numerous non-violent protests throughout the South were, however, beginning to show positive results. In 1957, the U.S. Congress passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act which made it a federal crime to interfere with a citizen's right to vote. It also established the Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of the law. With the passing of this legislation, most of the Southern White politicians became even more enraged. In 1960, another bill was past to ensure everyone's right to vote. The 1960 Civil Rights Act called for supervision of voter registration. Blacks were routinely denied permission to register. They were often made to wait for hours for an application to vote. Most of the applications were lost or discarded for various reasons. It was hoped that this legislation would stop these practices, however, it did not. Individual States had every right under the law to establish whatever rules they deemed necessary. The rules, however, were different for Blacks and Whites. For the next few years, tens of thousands of protesters were beaten and jailed. Some lost homes, jobs, and even their lives. In 1962, two journalists were killed in Oxford, Mississippi. They were there covering the riots that erupted after a young black man named James Meredith's admittance into the University of Mississippi. Mississippi State officials did everything possible to deny Meredith admittance, but in the end they allowed him in. On Sunday, September 30, 1962, 123 federal marshals, 316 U.S. border patrolmen, and 97 federal prison guards escorted Meredith onto the college campus. Within hours, they were under assault by a White mob of over 2,000 men and women. President Kennedy had to send in sixteen thousand troops to protect Meredith and restore order at the university. Twenty-eight of the marshals were shot and another 160 police officers were injured. Federal troops remained at the university for over a year to protect one, James Meredith. After waiting years for meaningful Civil Rights legislation to come forth, A. Philip Randolph and other Black leaders felt that it was time for a march on Washington. As Black leaders organized the march, White politicians in Washington

buy custom Trade-offs to High-Priced Cancer Drugs essay

buy custom Trade-offs to High-Priced Cancer Drugs essay Question 1 Over the past few years, the cost of cancer drugs as well as related care and treatment have been sky rocketing. Many cancer patients today pay thousands of dollars per year for medical care and many others abandon treatment because of these high prices of drugs. These high costs are majorly attributed to the emergence of new and better drugs that prolong life. They are also more expensive because there is a major shift by doctors and patients towards these drugs due to the urge for better treatment. Cancer drugs are complex and not easily available in generic form hence the research and development as well as the effort put to bring them into the market are some the reasons for their exceptional high costs. Emergences of new technologies for research as well as for diagnosis also contribute to the high pricesof drugs (Sherman, 2011). Question 2 Increased government involvement in the research of cancer drugs would be a remedy that eventually puts an end to the atrocious discrepancy of high cost of cancer drugs. In the United States, the National Cancer Act which brought about National Cancer Program as well as National Cancer Institute was put in place and given unique capabilities towards accelerated cancer research. Such alliances by government and medical research as well as additional budgetary allocations would relate to lower prices of drugs that patients can afford without much struggle. Many insurance companies have in the present deviated from making reimbursements or full benefits. Direct government involvement through passage of healthcare legislations would see to it that cancer patients get insurance benefitss (Sherman, 2011). Question 3 Many of the things that people want are not freely available to them. Medical therapy for the treatment of cancer has been recently approximated to cost up to thirty thousand dollars a month. Recently approved chemotherapy is used to treat patients together with the administration of new costly drugs hence the high prices of treatment. There is a high demand for this treatment as well as the drugs which is not readily available to all. The constant need for better treatment and medicine has kept researchers and medical technologists on toes as to continually put more resources as well as new technologies to come up with advanced treatment. This high cost of medical therapy form of treatment and demand relates to the economic concept of scarcity in relation to prices (Sherman, 2011). Buy custom Trade-offs to High-Priced Cancer Drugs essay

What explains the demise of the Bretton Woods system Essay

What explains the demise of the Bretton Woods system - Essay Example The joint venture brought about a system wherein countries having problems in balance of payments can solve it because of one of the feature of fixed exchange rates in the agreement. This has laid to an economic reconstruction in Europe for a very long decade which in turn gave rise to capitalist expansion, which has not been seen till date. This gave an added boost to the global economy where mostly in the capitalist countries, the standard of living of the working class has improved to a very high extent. (Bordo & Eichengreen, 1993). In the period of post World War 1, majority of the countries had a tendency to go back to the previous situation of financial stability and security as it prevailed before such wars were held. The old gold standard were again preferred and every country tried to incline towards it and by 1926 all the leading economies again established the system and accordingly the circulating money of every nation had to be geared by gold reserves and foreign currenc ies to a huge extent. But while implementing the gold several steps were undertaken mistakenly as a result of which the economic and financial relations collapsed leading to the Great Depression in 1929. In order to reduce the deficit in payment balance by deflating its currency every single country gave a boost to its export product to increase its competitiveness in productivity. This idea fell in place and was running successfully till the countries continued deflating their currencies. This over laid phenomenon marked an international deflation competition which led to unemployment among masses, enterprises were rubbed out of bankruptcy, many credit institutions failed and also hyper inflation was noted to occur in various countries concerned. (Kenen, 1994; Moggridge, 1980). Due to this phenomenon of Great Depression, several conferences who were dealing with the world monetary problems ended up in failure in the decade of 1930s. But every country tended for a stabilizing system that rectified mistakes which became one of the evident phenomenons. After this, several plans were made in order to build an innovative monetary system and an institution that will supervise all sorts of actions and financial hazards. During the war time conditions, all of the initial negotiations happened. (Kenen, 1994; Moggridge, 1980). In Bretton Woods, New Hampshire (USA), an international conference took place in 1944. This conference was attended by 44 countries so as to restructure the international finance and currency relationships. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and The International Bank For Reconstruction And Development (IBRD/ World Bank) was created by the participants of this conference . In addition, they also accepted the fact of implementing a system of fixed exchange rate with the U.S dollar as the leading currency. Harry Dexter White, the American Minister of State in the U.S treasury and the British Economist John Mayard Keynes were responsible to devel op the plans for the Bretton Woods system. They also stated that they want to establish a system which would be acceptable by all the nations. The ideas of Harry Dexter and Keynes always happened to be very similar to each other. The White Plan supplements that a Bank for Reconstruction and an International Stabilization Fund should be put up. This was similar to what Keynes has described in his plan. But there was a little difference which got reflected in Keynes plan was he wanted to vest the IMF ideas with possibilities to create money and with the authority to take actions on a very large scale. Whenever there will be imbalances in the balance of payments both the sides, that is, both the debtors and creditors must change their policies. Countries that have their payments in excess should increase their scale of imports from the countries