History Repeats Itself

HIST 1700
Stephanie George
5 May 2016

As Mark Twain put it, History does not repeat itself, but it does
rhyme. Like in a rhyme, events in history have a similar sound to
them. There are still groups of people discriminated against in the
world today, that have been fighting for equality for decades. While
there has been some progress, and some issues have been fixed, other
issues arise. Women and minorities are still unable to fully enjoy
American freedom.
During the Womens Era, nearly 5 million women worked for
wages. Most of them were young, unmarried, and concentrated in
traditional jobs. But a generation of college-educated women was
beginning to take its place in better-paying clerical and professional
positions. In 1874, the Womens Christian Temperance Union was
founded. Feminism shifted toward an outlook more in keeping with
prevailing racial and ethnic norms. The movement continued to argue
for womens equality in employment, education, and politics. [Foner
528-529]
Until 1963, when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique,
not everyone was aware of feminist concerns. In the 1940s, Friedan
had published articles on pay discrimination against women workers

and racism in the workplace. The law slowly began to address feminist
concerns. [Foner 795] By this time, feminist ideas had entered the
mainstream. In 1962, a poll showed that two-thirds of American
women did not feel themselves to be victims of discrimination. But by
1974, two-thirds of them did.
In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act, barring sex
discrimination among holders of the same jobs; the Civil Rights Act of
1964, prohibited inequalities based on sex as well as race. After getting
so many complaints of discrimination by working women, the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission established by the law became a
major force in breaking down barriers to female employment. [Foner
795] Today, women are still only paid 76-81 percent what men make,
for the same job. [Hill]
In Harlem in 1964, there were riots, resulting in battles between
blacks and mainly white police. The Watts uprising of 1965 happened
after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Police and firemen were
attacked, white-owned businesses were robbed, and buildings were
burned. Thirty-five people were killed, 900 were injured, and $30
million worth of property had been destroyed. In 1967, another
uprisings left twenty-three dead in Newark and forty-three in Detroit.
Entire blocks went up in flames and property damage cost hundreds of
millions of dollars. In 1968, the Kerner Report blamed the violence on
segregation and poverty and offered a powerful indictment of white

racism. But the report failed to offer any clear proposals for change.
[Foner 783] In 2014, police brutality occurred again in Ferguson,
Missouri. In 2015, again in Baltimore, even though there were years of
complaints about police brutality in the city, An investigation by the
newspaper last year found that the city had paid nearly $6 million
since 2011 to settle 102 lawsuits alleging brutality. [Baltimore]
History repeats itself. Not always in the same way, but similarly.
Women have come much further in society, but are still unequally paid.
And Police brutality and riots are still happening in the United States.
References:
"Baltimore Riots Following Freddie Gray's Death Come After Years of
ComplainBaltimore Riots Following Freddie Gray's Death Come
After Years
of Complaints About Police Brutalityts About Police Brutality."
N.p., 28 Apr.
2015. Web.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty!: An American History (Brief Fourth Edition)
(Vol. 2), 4th Edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 20140205.
VitalBook file.
Hill, Catherine "The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap (Spring
2016)." AAUW: Empowering Women Since 1881. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May
2016.