Oral anglais : places and forms of power

I'm going to talk about the notion: places and forms of power. First let me define the notion: Places could be buildings or institutions, like the House of Commons in Great Britain or the Congress in the United States of America. Power is the ability to exercise control over others. It can be a person, a group or a nation having a great influence over people’s behaviour. Power can create social cohesion but can also lead to conflict and tensions. Power is often associated to misuses, abuses or counter-power and involves resistance.

So we may wonder to what extent the Black Lives matters movement have a form of power.

To answer this question we will see the song “I sat on a bus”, the movie “The help” and

To illustrate this notion, I have chosen to answer the question: How did black civil rights activists use nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring change?

From the beginning of the XVII century to today whites people beats to maintain power. We call this “white supremacy”. It represents the belief that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds and that therefore whites should politically dominate non-whites.

So how the segregation stopped ?

To answer this problem, i am going to develop two parts,

The first one is « the action of the african american » and in second time « the differents laws »

I / The action of african American.

This struggle could be violent or non-violent and took different forms: in literature, music or visual art.

There were a lot of deeds from African Americans but the most significant and famous for me is the story of Rosa Parks, she’s the one who opened the way to civil rights for all African Americans. She is an African American civil rights activist. She is famous because she refused to give up her seat to a white man in 1955. Before, black people could not use the same publics spaces as whites. Rosa was exhausted of the treatment that her and other African Americans received every day. She was then arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation. In class, we worked on a song called “I sat on a bus”, the song turn the story of Rosa Parks into a funny way, ironically. There is some lyrics saying:

How come I caused such fuss?

What shocking behavior did I do?

We-e-e-ell

I sat on a bus

It shows how ridiculous the story is, and how for such a trivial matter, thing turn out that way.

But it’s not the end, the events triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by the famous Martin Luther King Jr.

» I have a dream « .

I’m now going to takl about the movie “the help”: This film is a perfect example of civil resistance and an illustration of the non-violent protests that took place at a time when there was a lot of discrimination against the African-Americans. What was known as « civil disobedience » was very often

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