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Two Americas
Two Americas is a phrase used by Martin Luther King Jr. in his speech "The Other America" to describe the differences in what life is like for Black/African-Americans and Whites due to the lack of equal protection under the law and the racial class system designed to keep people with African and Native ancestry from equality and freedom. John Edwards later revisited the Two Americas theme frequently in his 2004 run for vice president and his 2008 presidential campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. King refers to a lack of opportunities, jobs, minimum wage, and support for poor citizens. To support his claims, he lists the hardship of Black people: unemployment rates, annual income, lynchings, voter suppression, church burnings/bombings, lack of training and educational opportunities and compared it to the bountiful resources and supportive conditions of White Middle America. He gave this speech multiple times, including on April 14, 1967, at Stanford University. In the speech, he d ...
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Martin Luther King Jr
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil and political rights, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination in the United States, discrimination. A Black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, Desegregation in the United States, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights. He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize nonviol ...
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I Have A Dream
"I Have a Dream" is a Public speaking, public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was one of the most famous moments of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in History of the United States, American history. Beginning with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared millions of slaves free in 1863, King said: "one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free".Alexandra Alvarez, "Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream': The Speech Event as Metaphor", ''Journal of Black Studies'' 18(3); . Toward the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for an improvised perorati ...
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2004 Speeches
4 (four) is a number, numeral (linguistics), numeral and numerical digit, digit. It is the natural number following 3 and preceding 5. It is a square number, the smallest semiprime and composite number, and is tetraphobia, considered unlucky in many East Asian cultures. Evolution of the Hindu-Arabic digit Brahmic numerals represented 1, 2, and 3 with as many lines. 4 was simplified by joining its four lines into a cross that looks like the modern plus sign. The Shunga Empire, Shunga would add a horizontal line on top of the digit, and the Northern Satraps, Kshatrapa and Pallava dynasty, Pallava evolved the digit to a point where the speed of writing was a secondary concern. The Arabs' 4 still had the early concept of the cross, but for the sake of efficiency, was made in one stroke by connecting the "western" end to the "northern" end; the "eastern" end was finished off with a curve. The Europeans dropped the finishing curve and gradually made the digit less cursive, endi ...
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Silent Majority
The silent majority is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly. The term was popularized by U.S. President Richard Nixon in a televised address on November 3, 1969, in which he said, "And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support." In this usage it referred to those Americans who did not join in the large demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the time, who did not join in the counterculture, and who did not participate in public discourse. Nixon, along with many others, saw this group of Middle Americans as being overshadowed in the media by the more vocal minority. Preceding Nixon by half a century, it was employed in 1919 by Calvin Coolidge's campaign for the 1920 presidential nomination. Before that, the phrase was used in the 19th century as a euphemism referring to all the people who have died, and others have used it before and after Nixon to refer to gr ...
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Red States And Blue States
Starting with the 2000 United States presidential election, the terms "red state" and "blue state" have referred to US states whose voters vote predominantly for one party—the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party in red states and the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party in blue states—in presidential and other statewide elections. By contrast, states where the predominant vote fluctuates between Democratic and Republican candidates are known as "swing states" or "purple states". Examining patterns within states reveals that the Sixth Party System#Scholarly perspectives, reversal of the two parties' geographic bases has happened at the state level, but it is more complicated locally, with urban-rural divides associated with many of the largest changes. All states contain both liberal and conservative voters (i.e., they are "purple") and only appear blue or red on the electoral map because of the Plurality voting, winner-take-all system used by mo ...
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No New Taxes
"Read my lips: no new taxes" is a phrase spoken by American presidential candidate George H. W. Bush at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans as he accepted the nomination on August 18. Written by speechwriter Peggy Noonan, the line was the most prominent sound bite from the speech. The pledge not to tax the American people further had been a consistent part of Bush's 1988 election platform, and its prominent inclusion in his speech cemented it in the public consciousness. The line later hurt Bush politically. Although he did oppose the creation of new taxes as president, the Democratic-controlled Congress proposed increases in existing taxes as a way to reduce the national budget deficit. Bush negotiated with Congress for a budget that met his pledge, but was unable to make a deal with a Senate and House that was controlled by the opposing Democrats. Bush agreed to a compromise, which increased several existing taxes as part of a 1990 budget agreement. In ...
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Poverty In The United States
In the United States, poverty has both social and political implications. Based on Measuring poverty, poverty measures used by the Census Bureau (which exclude non-cash factors such as food stamps or medical care or public housing), America had 37 million people defined as living in poverty in 2023; this is 11 percent of the population. Some of the many causes include income, inequality, inflation, unemployment, debt traps and poor education.Western, B. & Pettit, B., (2010)Incarceration and social inequality.Daedalus, 139(3), 8-19 The majority of adults living in poverty are employed and have at least a high school education. Although the US is a relatively wealthy country by international standards, it has a persistently high poverty rate compared to other developed countries due in part to a less generous welfare system. Efforts to alleviate poverty include New Deal-era legislation during the Great Depression, to the national war on poverty in the 1960s and poverty alleviat ...
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Pledge Of Allegiance (United States)
The U.S Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States. The first version was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the American Civil War, Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. Bellamy, the circulation manager for ''The Youth's Companion'' magazine, helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse ...
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The Other America
''The Other America: Poverty in the United States'' is a 1962 book by socialist writer Michael Harrington on the dire living conditions of the American poor. It was a muckraking-style exposé which spotlighted the entrenched poverty of 40–50 million people in a country that was being touted as "the affluent society". ''The Other America'' became a publishing phenomenon after Dwight Macdonald gave it a laudatory review in ''The New Yorker'' in January 1963. His review reportedly prompted President Kennedy to read the book, and then to propose anti-poverty legislation later in 1963. The book was also said to have been a catalyst for the Johnson administration's War on Poverty program. Harrington would go on to write over a dozen more works such as ''The Accidental Century'' (1965), ''Toward a Democratic Left'' (1968), and ''Socialism'' (1972), but none was as impactful as ''The Other America'', which was listed by ''TIME'' magazine as one of the 10 most influential nonfict ...
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One Nation Conservatism
One-nation conservatism, also known as one-nationism or Tory democracy, is a form of British political conservatism and a variant of paternalistic conservatism. It advocates the "preservation of established institutions and traditional principles within a political democracy, in combination with social and economic programmes designed to benefit the ordinary person". According to this political philosophy, society should be allowed to develop in an organic way, rather than being engineered. It argues that members of society have obligations towards each other and particularly emphasises paternalism, meaning that those who are privileged and wealthy should pass on their benefits. It argues that this elite should work to reconcile the interests of all social classes, including labour and management, rather than identifying the good of society solely with the interests of the business class. The descriptive phrase 'one-nation Tory' originated with Benjamin Disraeli (1804–18 ...
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Make America Great Again
"Make America Great Again" (MAGA, ) is an American political slogan most recently popularized by Donald Trump during his successful presidential campaigns in 2016 and in 2024. "MAGA" is also used to refer to Trump's ideology, political base, or to an individual or group of individuals from within that base. The slogan became a pop culture phenomenon, seeing widespread use and spawning numerous variants in the arts, entertainment and politics, being used by both supporters and opponents of Trump's presidency and as the name of the Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc. Originally used by Ronald Reagan as a campaign slogan in his 1980 presidential campaign (''Let's Make America Great Again''), it has since been described as a loaded phrase. It has been described as a slogan representing American exceptionalism and promoting an idealistic or romanticized American past that excludes certain groups. Multiple scholars, journalists, and commentators have called the slogan ra ...
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Cross Of Gold Speech
The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former United States United States House of Representatives, Representative from Nebraska, at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. In his address, Bryan supported "free silver" (i.e. bimetallism), which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. He decried the gold standard, concluding the speech, "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold". Bryan's address helped catapult him to the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party's presidential nomination and is considered one of the greatest political speeches in American history. For twenty years, Americans had been bitterly divided over the nation's monetary standard. The gold standard, which the United States had effectively been on since 1873, limited the money supply but eased trade with other nations, such as the United Kingdom, whose currency was also based on gold. Many Ame ...
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