ROOTS OF RACISM & PIVOTAL FIGURES THROUGHOUT THE YEARS

Class: A’ grade of Senior High School Students: Diamanti Stella

Perathoraki Maria Koutroumanos Giannis

Stamatelos Vaggelis

Teacher: Ms Tsangari

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

To raise students awareness on a matter of great importance

broaden their horizons on the evolution of the racist movement over the years and

acquaint them with pivotal historical figures that have left their mark in history and played a significant role in the eradication of racism in the world

RACISM

“Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.” Muhammad Ali

“The white man's

happiness cannot be

purchased by the

black man's misery.”

Frederick Douglass

DEFINITION OF RACISM

A belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s race is superior and has the right to control others.

A belief in a policy of enforcing the asserted right of control.

ROOTS OF RACISM

Prejudice against people who look different goes back to the beginning of recorded history:• ancient Greek• early Christians with the underworld & demons.

 

The classical empires of Greece and Rome were based on slave labor.

THINK: White people originated in what is today Europe most slaves in ancient Greece and Rome were white.

10th - 16th centuries : Chief source of slaves in Western

Europe: Eastern Europe. The word "slave" comes from the

word "Slav," the people of Eastern Europe.

Nelson Mandela Martin Luther King Malcom X.

Martin Luther King

PIVOTAL FIGURES

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela (1918 – 5 2013):

a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary politician philanthropist The first President of South Africa (1994-

1999)

• Although supporting non-violent protest, he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

• In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

• Mandela served 27 years in prison.

• An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife.

Sakharov Prize (1988)Bharat Ratna (1990)Nobel Peace Prize (1993)Order of LeninPresidential Medal of Freedom

Awards

Bust of Mandela erected on London's South Bank by the Greater London Council administration of socialist Ken Livingstone in 1985

"Nelson Mandela – Freedom fighter in South Africa" as stated in Russian by this 1988 Soviet commemorative stamp dating from the Gorbachev era

Martin Luther King

• MARTIN LUTHER KING (1929 –1968):

AN AMERICAN BAPTIST MINISTER, ACTIVIST, HUMANITARIAN, AND LEADER IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT.

In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was

assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His

death was followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

Statue of King in Birmingham's Kelly Ingram Park

• King in 1963 he was named Time Person of the Year.

• In 2000, he was voted sixth in an online "Person of the Century" poll by the same magazine.

Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy with Civil Rights leaders, June 22, 1963

MALCOLM X• Malcolm X was an influential

and controversial figure in the American civil rights movements of the 1960s.

• He preached a radical philosophy of racial equality.

Malcom X’s ideology started at a very young age. As a youngster he was shocked when he told his teacher he wished to become a lawyer. His teacher responded.

“Lawyer, that’s no realistic goal for a nigger…

Why don’t you plan on carpentry?” At the age of 21, after committing illegal acts, he was sentenced to prison where he was introduced to the message of Islam.

• On February, 21, 1965 he was assassinated in New York, by rival Black Muslims.

• Malcolm X was instrumental in forging the

movement of black power and radicalism that departed from the more non-violent approach of Martin Luther King.

“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negroes as simply a racial conflict of black against white.. Rather we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploited…”– Malcolm X

Artists fighting against racism