Part 15 (2/2)

Unfortunately for the white southerners, the attempt to equalize the races had the support of gigolo John, the thirty-fifth president of the United States. Many people hypothesized that JFK truly cared about the equality of African Americans. Others felt that he had yet to score with a woman of color and was simply using his presidential influence to equalize the rights of minorities in order to win the favor of black women. Although anxious to see the pa.s.sage of a Civil Rights Act to boost his luck with black women, JFK never realized his dream, as former New Orleans resident and self-proclaimed Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald shot him dead in Dallas, Texas.

With the president dead, former vice president turned president Lyndon B. Johnson capitalized on the sympathies of legislators in the House and Senate to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a final tribute to JFK's wishes of equalizing the rights of minority Americans. Subsequently, tables at restaurants and tickets to ball games became increasingly more difficult to get with the added compet.i.tion of hungry African American sports fans across the country.

19251965 MALCOLM X.

One bad-a.s.s non-Caucasian.

Who Was Malcolm X?

Malcolm was one bad-a.s.s non-Caucasian. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 19, 1925, Malcolm was Earl and Louise Little's bundle of joy. Malcolm's father was a Baptist minister who had developed a nons.e.xual crush on Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey. The man who caught Earl's platonic eye headed up the Universal Negro Improvement a.s.sociation, a national organization focused on parlaying blacks' favored wartime draft status into an improved draft status for African Americans in the National Basketball a.s.sociation, along with civil rights for those not talented enough to play basketball at the highest level.

Fueling Earl's pa.s.sion for equality was his mistrust of the white man. At the time of Malcolm's birth, three of Earl's brothers had already met an untimely death, including a Southern-style lynching at the suspected hands of the American majority. On a personal level, Earl also experienced a number of death threats that caused Louise and him to relocate the Little family several times.

While Malcolm was still a young child, his father met his own untimely death when he was. .h.i.t by a streetcar named Ivory. Fortunately for the black community, the police reported that when they arrived at the scene Earl was conscious enough to tell them he had clumsily slipped and fell underneath the streetcar's wheel all on his own. He told the police to make sure everyone knew that no white man was involved in his death and that he apologized for any inconvenience his self-inflicted, yet accidental death would cause. Even with Earl's attempt to head off any issues, many people in the black community suspected that a white supremacist group called Black Legion was responsible for his death.

Studious X.

With Malcolm's father suffering the same fate as three of his brothers and his mother earning residency at a mental hospital, Malcolm spent the next several years being pa.s.sed around like a joint at a high school party as he went from foster home to foster home. Despite his difficult upbringing, he excelled academically and finished at the top of his cla.s.s in junior high. Benefiting from a chance career counseling session with one of his favorite teachers, he was famously told by his ”white is better” educator that his goal of becoming a lawyer was ”no realistic goal for a n.i.g.g.e.r.”

Malcolm quickly embraced the wise advice he received and lost interest in school. With the inconvenience of school out of his life, Malcolm began an apprentices.h.i.+p in narcotics, gambling, and prost.i.tution. Unfortunately for Malcolm, before he could complete his studies he was convicted of burglary charges in Boston and sentenced to ten years in prison.

While incarcerated, Malcolm read like a man with nothing to do. During his imprisonment, his brother Reginald would visit and discuss his conversion to the Muslim religion. Malcolm quickly became drawn to the teachings of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Elijah M. had very little love for those who were not black and advocated that black people should have their own nation uninhabited by white people and polar bears. Paroled in 1952, Malcolm dropped his surname, Little, in favor of X in an effort to represent his lost tribal name as well as to intimidate white people. With an intimidating name and black power on his mind Malcolm prepared to fight the civil rights fight.

X Marks the Spot for Controversy.

Malcolm's charisma and message drew frustrated African Americans to him as his reputation grew across the country as a radical civil rights leader. His outspoken nature and strong words led to government surveillance. On April 3, 1964, Malcolm gave his most famous speech, ”The Ballot or the Bullet” in a church in Cleveland, Ohio. The speech centered on Malcolm X imploring African Americans to exercise their right to vote and to realize that those whom they had voted for in the past had not taken care of them.

The ”Bullet” part of the speech was a message to blacks that if they were not given the equality they deserved, they should take up arms and fight for the rights promised to them as Americans. Malcolm X's support of violence turned full circle when he fell victim to sixteen bullets during a meeting of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Three members of the Nation of Islam were later convicted of his murder.

19591975 THE VIETNAM WAR.

Ideal for those interested in fighting in the most h.e.l.lish possible places.

Soldier On.

Nothing rips this country apart at the seams more dramatically than an unpopular war. The idea of sending young Americans abroad to fight the fight for a country whose citizens are so geographically challenged that even the brightest of the bright couldn't find the United States on a well-labeled wall map is reason enough to p.i.s.s a lot of people off. The tiny Asian country of Vietnam was one of these countries that proved to be so geographically deficient about the United States that it quickly divided our country into pro, no-pro war corners.

As for the U.S. citizens fortunate enough to enjoy a government sponsored adventure vacation to the jungles of Vietnam, their knowledge of their travel destination was limited to the handful of times they had dined on the country's cuisine.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner.

As the war in Vietnam escalated, the Bureau of Travel and Military Affairs began to fall behind on its supply of travelers willing to make the trek to the small, impoverished country. To rectify the situation, the B.T.M.A. set up a national lottery beginning in December 1969 for giving away thousands upon thousands of vacation packages to the Asian hotspot. Unfortunately for women and the elderly, the rules of the lottery prohibited them from winning. In fact, preferential treatment was given to males aged eighteen to twenty-six.

With ticket sales sluggish but the commitment still needing to be honored, scores of young men began to receive notification in the mail of their winning lottery number, even though they couldn't recall purchasing a ticket. In addition, the trip winners received new t.i.tles like ”private” and ”soldier.”

Meet Charlie.

The U.S. soldiers, who were fortunate enough to have the government make third-cla.s.s travel arrangements for them, enjoyed jungles that provided malaria, dysentery, 120-degree temperatures, 95 percent humidity, and obnoxiously inconvenient elephant gra.s.s. These conditions proved to be ideal for those interested in fighting in the most h.e.l.lish possible places.

The U.S. troops were thrown into a situation where they were facing an enemy who had been waging war for many years, with a willingness to continue for years to come. The North Vietnamese guerilla-style war seemed endless because, in fact, it was. With a per-capita income of less than a dollar a day, there wasn't much for the Vietnamese to look forward to once the war concluded.

Was It 1975 or 2008?

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