Martin Luther King, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, said, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” History has repeatedly proven that those in power are reluctant to give it up; that would appear to them as a weakness. This power is often at the expense of the minority, being ruled by the “tyranny of the majority”(Mill 7). Often the greatest injustices are the ones fueled by hatred and ignorance and are proven wrong by the passage of time. This occurrence is seen in travesties such as the Holocaust, slavery, and Jim Crow laws. The Holocaust was a result of the search for racial purity. Slavery was founded on the racism of the past and directly lead to Jim Crow laws. These pains were ended by the voices of the minority speaking out in any way that they could. There is no easy or painless way to protest …show more content…
As the Black Lives Matter movement fights against police brutality and inequality in a system that has a clear imbalance of power; thousands of Americans view this movement as hateful and that in protesting, they are hurting their own cause. A large majority of people believe that as the Civil Rights movement ended, as did racism. Some people may agree with this statement, but the numbers do not lie. ACLU of Southern California released a report that analyzed more than 700,000 cases when the LAPD stopped pedestrians and drivers between July 2003 and June 2004. African Americans were 127% more likely to be frisked when stopped, and were 76% more likely to be searched. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that the prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than white men who had committed similar crimes. The same statements are made about the Standing Rock protesters in North Dakota, saying that they are too violent and need to stop their