Coretta Scott King, wife of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, once stated, “Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” Evidence clearly supports Mrs. King’s contention that freedom is a constant struggle. Wars, conflicts, and struggles throughout history and some that continue today provide the best examples. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States, World War II, and the Cold War provide the strongest evidence that people must struggle and sacrifice to maintain their freedom.
To begin with, African-Americans were enslaved prior to the Civil War. After the Emancipation Proclamation and passage of a constitutional amendment to outlaw slavery, African-Americans had to continue to struggle for their freedom. For nearly a century, African-Americans faced racial discrimination. In the 1950s and 1960s, a Civil Rights Movement in the United States wanted to get rid of discrimination. One civil rights group called the “Freedom Riders” wanted to help African-Americans fight discrimination, but they faced violence from groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). When the “Freedom Riders” went on a bus ride to New Orleans, “local police did little to stop angry mobs, and sometimes encouraged them,” as it stated in paragraph 5 in an article about the “Freedom …show more content…
The Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt and by several other empires throughout history. Sadly, millions of Jews lost their battle for freedom in World War II when the Nazis and Hitler conquered many countries in the world. The Nazis killed six million Jews during the war. After the war, the Jews who survived created Israel in the Middle East as a homeland for the Jewish people. To this day, there is always war and conflict there. If the Jewish people had believed that freedom is permanent once you get it, Israel would have been destroyed many years