Civil Rights Prejudice
During the civil rights movements, many groups stepped up to fight for equality for their group with the goal that “when future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we’re going to have to tell them... [that] after we kick[ed] the s**t out of the disease, we [were] all alive to kick the s**t out of [the] system, so that [it] never happene[d] again” (Russo). Vito Russo made it clear in his speech that they were going to unite and overcome discrimination from outsiders. After World War II, the nation that was united fell back into the discrimination they had within. This led to civil rights movements, where people hoped for equality in African American and LGBT communities. In civil rights movements, many groups
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At the time, African Americans faced numerous legal, economic, and social barriers that limited their access to education, employment, housing, and voting rights. In response, MLK led the 1963 March on Washington, which took place 100 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. MLK, during his March on Washington, delivered his speech to a quarter of a million people about the inequalities that African Americans faced and how, “one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” (King). MLK uses a metaphor to demonstrate the oppression African Americans still faced during the late 1900s and the prejudice inflicted upon them by white people who did not want change in the community. Even 100 years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery, African Americans still face a lot of prejudice from outside groups that do not want equality, MLK’s goal in stating this is to try and motivate his crowd into stepping up and taking action, or else change would never be brought. In 1988, the AIDS epidemic was raging in the United States, and discrimination against people with AIDS was rampant because the disease was primarily affecting marginalized communities, such as gay men, leading to widespread fear and misunderstanding about how the disease was transmitted. Vito Russo, who was an LGBT and AIDS activist during the twentieth century, delivered a speech to the general public on AIDS and how “if I'm dying from anything -- I’m dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a s**t. You know, living with AIDS