BLACK LIVES MATTER
NAACP’s Florida Travel Advisory: What Is It Good For?
The formal statement issued to the Sunshine State has left many African Americans feeling defeated
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Being a Black person from the South, you get to see America’s growing pains up close and personal. Since the early days, the southern states have been characterized as the cornerstone of slavery and anti-black racism in America. Research has even confirmed that an environment once heavily dependent on slavery can have an immense impact on unconscious racism targeting African Americans. Undoubtedly, the scourge of racism can be felt in every corner of America and throughout the world community. Nevertheless, the South has always been the epicenter of our nation’s apartheid. Black roots run deep. Southern Black roots run deeper.
The race riots of the early 1900s created a turbulent environment for Black citizens marked by a myriad of racial terror lynchings and damage to personal and business properties. White people who supported Black businesses were also unjustly targeted, and numerous Black families were forced to move with nothing but overwhelming sorrow and the sting of setbacks. The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, which left 35 city blocks of Black Wallstreet destroyed, is a prime example.
Additionally, mass acts of racial violence, such as the Atlanta Riots of 1906 and the Rosewood Massacre of 1923, grew out of animosity against African Americans, as many White southerners sought to intimidate their newly enfranchised presence following the Civil War. Another goal was to use their socio-political power against anyone who attempted to secure African Americans equal opportunities. Such riots are regarded as a proxy for the story of race in America. And yet, they never became the subject of study in any of the schoolbooks or college discourse I’ve had throughout my life. However, race riots, or race massacres as some have become known, did become a catalyst in the inception of a monumental movement.
The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization founded in 1909 on the basis of advancing justice and equality for African Americans. The interracial group of founders consisted of but were…
