TOP 10!!

• Katherine's proposal was very good. I agree with her on the issue that everyone should be able to decide the religion they want to follow. We should also respect the decisions of those who chose differently from us and not discriminate.
• Shae-Lynn's proposal was interesting. She has a great point. Iam with her in the fact that the LGBT community should not be treated differently just because of their sex orientation. They deserve every right that normal people have. It is very unfair to them that they have a harder life because of discrimination, when they are human beings just like everyone else.
• I definitely agree with Carolina's proposal. It is true that Native Americans have always been left out of many of the amendments made when they should be the first to receive them. It is not fair that them being the first to live here are being discriminated against and denied many rights. The Native Americans should be protected against this injustice!
• I really liked Nestor's proposal. I agree that people with dissabilities should have equal rights as any other citizen. They deserve to be treated equally and be able to work, go to school and do what ever they want to do with their lives. I am with Nestor in that their should be an amendment made to protect their rights.
• Randy's proposal was very good. My grandfather was a veteran and I agree that they deserve certain benefits for the years they served our country. They gave all they had in order to provide safety for us. They deserve to have healthcare plans and to receive adequate medical service due to the dameges cost by the war they fought in.
• I agree with Mandy's proposal. There should be a law that protects people of any race or skin color against mistreatment from police or other authorities. Muslims should be treated like every other person is because not all of them are bad people. We should learn not to judge people without knowing them.
• Tiffany's proposal was a great one. I agree that immigrants should not be placed so many restrictions to become citizens of the US. They only come in search of a better life and opportunity. I agree with her proposal in that families who want to become citizens should sent applications answering questions about reasons why they should be picked. That is a very good idea!
• Genderie's proposal was convincing. She explained how even today African Americans are discriminated. She is right in the fact that we are all humans and deserve to be treated equally. I also agree with her in that African Americans should be able to defend themselves in court just like any other person.
• I definitely have the same opinion as Itze about the rights the LGBT community. They deserve equal rights as anybody else. They should not be descriminated against. LGBTs should also be able to marry who ever they want and raise a family. If they love who ever they love let them be happy!
• Bianca's proposal was interesting. She proffed a good point and she explained how the scholarship can benefit both the government and the students. The proposal will help students continue and finish with their studies.

My Proposal

My fellow Congress members we all know that in the past it was very hard for different groups of people to earn the right to vote. Only white males who owned property could vote. This created great discord among the others who also believed they deserved that right as well. Today everyone over the age of 18 in the United States is allowed to vote, but what about teenagers? They make up a great part of our country’s population. Don’t they deserve to have a say on who will be their president for the next four years?

Throughout the years, the vote has proven to be one of the crucial elements that allow a democratic society to work at its best. In a democracy citizens have the right to choose their leader, which deals with the issues of importance, and to give their opinion on how their country is run. Therefore teenagers, fourteen years and up, should be given the right to vote. Many of the decisions made in the government affect them. At age 16, teens are allowed to get their driver’s license. This means that they have to follow the rules and laws of the road just like adults. For that reason, teens should be able to share the privilege of voting on laws that affect them when driving. Many of you may think that teens are not suitable to have such a big responsibility as it is that of voting since you think of them as rebellious, immature, self-centered, easily influenced people, but I assure you that many teenagers have broken free from this stereotype. A great amount of teenagers have applied in the work force demonstrating that they can also be responsible. Others show that they strongly care about their future by being excellent students and maintaining a great point average in school.

Teenagers should get the chance to make important decisions such as voting. It is essential that they feel part of the society and that they play an important role in our country. They deserve to be heard and their opinions to be taken in consideration. I’m sure that if we give them a chance to show us what they are capable of doing, we will be surprised.

Change

     At first, the right to vote in the United States was severely limited. The Constitution was written saying that only white males who owned property were the ones who had the vote. This has changed over the last two centuries. People in the US over the age of 18 are now allowed to vote no matter their race or gender. Those who did not have the right to vote before, achieved it with determination and hard work.

 

     In 1790, in the United States, only white male adults who owned property could vote. Women and African Americans were among the different groups excluded from voting. The first amendment passed related suffrage was the 14th amendment of 1868. It declared that any eligible 21 year old male had the right to vote. In 1870, the 15th amendment was passed, which gave former male slaves the right to vote and protected the right to vote of adult male citizens of any race. Wyoming was the first state to give voting rights to women. After that, in 1920 all women in the United States gained the right to vote with the 19th amendment. This amendment declared that suffrage could not be denied "on account of sex". The 24th amendment and the Voting Rights Act, banned restrictions and racist voting practices in all states. Finally all Americans over the age of 18 were given the right to vote with the 26th amendment of 1971.

     As years passed, laws changed in the United States for women and African Americans. They were excluded for many years from the amendments that gave the vote to white males. Changes were made and more groups of people were allowed to vote. Women and African Americans fought for this right until they finally accomplished their goal.

http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html   

http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/voting-rights

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html 

http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-rights-timeline.pdf

Struggle and Activism

Women  

     Three of the most important feminist reformers were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. They struggled as leaders to fight for women's rights. Stanton, Stone and Anthony were also insistent critics of men refusing political and social equality for women. They formed organizations which gathered women to protest peacefully in different ways and make proposals to change amendments in the constitution so that women would be included.

     The fight for women suffrage began in the 19th century. Women, and even some men, gathered at a convention in Seneca Falls NY, 1848 in which they drafted and approved the Declaration of Sentiments. This document was a bill of rights for women, including the right to vote. Four years after the Seneca Falls Convention, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, Susan B. Anthony joined the fight. She argued that “the right women needed above every other was the right of suffrage”. In 1872, other suffragists brought a series of court challenges. These were designed to test if voting was a privilege of the US citizenship now given to women by the new 14^th amendment. One of the challenges came out from the criminal prosecution of Susan when she illegally voted in 1872. The first case that got to the Supreme Court was the Minor v. Happersett of 1875, but this still did not work. After this case, suffragists started to take in consideration telling their concerns to the states and the Congress. In 1878, a constitutional amendment that said that “the right of citizens to vote shall not be abridge by the United States or by any state on account of sex” was proposed and would be introduced in each section of the Congress for the next 41 years.

African Americans Protesting for
the Right to Vote

African American                                                   

     African Americans were very determined to fight for their right to vote, just like women. They stood up for what they thought was right even when they were horribly treated, and when many other people tried to stop them. Still, African Americans did not surrender. They led peaceful protests and they finally achieved what they wanted.

     After the Civil War, all black man received the right to vote according to the Constitution. Unfortunately this was not exactly true. Not many African Americans were able to vote due to the different laws whites developed to exclude them. That is when blacks decided that they had to protest in some way. African American leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., organized marches and protests to make whites realize what they were doing. Martin Luther King Jr. led a protest in Selma, Alabama and then a fifty mile march to register African Americans to vote. Another march of African Americans working towards the right to vote was the one that occurred in 1965, which became known as Bloody Sunday. A few people started to march at first, but then the idea caught up and many people went to walk. The police met them at a bridge to tell them to stop but they wouldn’t, and so it became violent even when the African Americans started their walk peacefully.        

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/nineteentham.htm

http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112391/the_right_to_vote.htm

http://www.answers.com/topic/sex-discrimination-1 

http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=218946

Oppression

African Americans



Segregated Water Fountains



     African Americans were treated very badly by whites. They were seen as the inferior race and many of their rights were violated. They faced strong racial discrimination and inequality. Segregation was another problem they had to endure, but that was not it. After Reconstruction, the whites took control of the south again and passed laws that were discriminative of race. These laws were called Jim Crow laws. They segregated blacks from whites in the use of public and private facilities, such as trains, restaurants and restrooms.  They were given bad housing, and education. African Americans were also denied the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, to marry whites, or move freely. The 14^th amendment in 1868 was supposed to grant equal protection of laws, and the 15^th amendment in 1870 gave the right to all males no matter their race. These amendments were violated regarding African Americans.



Segregated Bus (blacks sit in the rear and whites at front)



Women

     Women, as well as African Americans, had to go through a lot when it came to their rights. They were denied most legal rights, such as voting, owning property, having their own wages, and even having custody of their children. During war men would go to fight and women would take their place in the workplace, but after war ended women had to return to their traditional role of homemaker. Many people believed that women should better serve society by staying at home to influence the next generation of men. Those women, who got the chance to work outside of home, were usually paid less than the men for the same job. They also could not get higher-paying professions such as medicine, law or finance. Other than problems in the workplace, they also faced problems regarding their own body. In the mid 1800’s some states passed laws that prohibited abortion. Also some of the amendments passed did not include women, which made it harder for them to defend themselves. One example is the 15^th amendment which said "the right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude"; women were not included here.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era.htm

http://law.jrank.org/pages/5254/Civil-Rights-Movement.html

http://connected.mcgraw-hill.com/media/repository/premium_content/EBOOK/50000003/32/10/mhssg_main.html?stateCode=AL

Voting Rights History

Women

·    The women’s fight for the right to vote officially began on 1848 in the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. Drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions was signed by 68 women and 32 men. This document demanded women equality with men in education and employment, and the right to vote.

·    In 1869 the proposed 15^th amendment which gave black men the right to vote made women more motivated to fight for their own right. In May, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton gathered women to form the National Woman Suffrage Association. Their mayor goal was to achieve voting rights for women by means of a congressional amendment to the Constitution. In November of that same year, another woman named Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association, which focused on gaining voting rights for women through amendments to individual state constitutions.

·    In 1890 the two groups came together under the name of National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), to fight together for American women’s right to vote.

·    Women kept fighting and finally gained the right to vote on August 26, 1920 when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was signed into law by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

Statistics: About 55.3% of the female population in the US in 1968 voted. In 2008 65.7% of the female population in the US voted. Therefore the percent of the women who voted in 2008 and 1968 increased by 10.4%.



One of the Associations Formed by Women to Fight for their Voting Rights



African Americans

• African Americans faced a lot of trouble when it came to their rights. Even though the 15^th amendment granted them the right to vote in 1870, they still had to overcome certain obstacles placed by the whites who feared that African Americans would gain too much power. Some of these obstacles included poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic impediments. Blacks who lived in the south also faced problems, when they tried to register to vote or actually vote, such as harassment, intimidation, economic reprisals, and physical violence.
• African Americans had to fight hard for their right to vote. They organized campaigns and peaceful protests to achieve equality. They moved to places, mostly northern cities, where they were allowed to vote without any problems and where politicians listened to their concerns. They finally achieved one of the things they most desired with the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This document was meant to protect the right to vote of African Americans. 
  

Statistics: In 1968, about 42.1% of the African American population voted. In 2004, about 60.0% of the black population voted. In 2008, about 64.7% of the black population in the US voted. The percent African American voters increased over the years. From 1968 to 2004 it increased by 17.9%. From 2004 to 2008 it increased by 4.7%.

Protest for the Right to Vote

  http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/voting/p20-230/tab22.pdf

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.html
http://www.core-online.org/History/voting_rights.htm