Places and forms of power: how did white power manifest itself?

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to black and the actual film begins.

The scene takes place on a road at night. We can’t hear anything except the car engine. One car rolls onto the road, inside the car there are three people, two white and one black, they are civil rights activists. The car is followed by three other cars with no lights on, they move very fast behind the first car. The sound changes to a military drum as the car chase starts. One of the three cars turn their siren on and we hence realize that it is a police car. We still feel scared because we know something terrible is going to happen. The cars then stop at the side of the road, a cop comes up to the car and asks him questions while blinding him with a flashlight. The police man is aggressive, and the people in the car feel threatened. The police man pulls out a gun and we know death is coming, the cop shoots the driver, the screen turns black and we can hear three other gun shots presumably killing the two-other people in the car. This scene is to introduce the plot, the whole film is a consequence of this scene. The spectator from the very beginning feels hate for the culprits. The rest of the film is a FBI investigation surrounding the murder of the three civil rights activists. We find out during the film that the police men at the beginning were in fact members of the KKK. This film showcase what happened during the 60’s in the deep south, like the KKK burning houses down hanging black men etc... This film was quite heart-breaking but truly showed what was going on then.

My last document is a song by Abel Meeropol, the song is named strange fruit and was sung by many artist such as Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. This song is a protest song about the lynching of the African Americans in the southern United States during the Jim Crow era. Indeed, the strange fruit in the song is in fact the bodies they used to hang on the big trees. This song was the first big protest song and was performed across the country and denounces lynching in North America. Even though the song is very subtle, it’s a very powerful song that was even named song of the 20th century.

During the 20th century and before then, coloured people were very oppressed by white power especially in the South of America. The KKK were very present and there was a lot of lynching as well. But during the 60’s and 70’s, the situation has bettered and the African Americans have protested for their civil rights. We can see that things are completely different nowadays, from 2008 to 2016 American has seen their first African American president.

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