The Cold War and the Color Line Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Cold War and the Color Line - Assignment Example International situation in the late 1950s - early 1960s turned domestic discrimination into a literally vital issue that might affect the future of the whole world. World War II triggered the anti-colonial movement in Asia and Africa, and the balance of powers in the world - given approximate parity between the communist and capitalist blocks - depended upon what form of political establishment those new countries would choose. And again, in the 1950s several politicians tried to draw the attention of the federal government to the link between discriminatory domestic policies of racial segregation and failure of the American efforts to extend political influence over new Asian and African states. In 1952, Chester Bowles, U.S. Ambassador to India, pronounced a speech at Yale University in which he clearly specified the causes of repeated failures in those regions: "A year, or even a week in Asia is enough to convince any perceptive American that the colored peoples of Asia and Africa, who total two-thirds of the world's population, seldom think about the United States without considering the limitations under which our 13 million Negroes are living" (Dudziak, 2000: 77). Being put on the verge of losing its international prestige the United States was forced to take serious efforts to improve the situation. The international pressure was accompanied by constantly growing domestic tension: throughout the 1950s black population of the country expressed increasing ability to organize and oppose segregationist laws (Borstelmann, 2002). Thus, in December 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American woman refused to give up her seat in the bus to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama. The incident resulted in a one-day boycott against segregation on Public transportation and led to the emergence of the Montgomery Improvement Association headed by a young minister from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin King. After a year of struggle and numerous arrests, the Supreme Court outlawed segregationist laws of Alabama: the name of Martin Luther King became known all over the world. Leaders of the emerging African American civil rights movement met at the beginning of 1957 and established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). This organization led by King played a critically important role in the development of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The black suffrage movement spread across the South where African Americans were in the majority but deprived of major political rights. Despite strong resistance of the white politicians, the Congress responded to the suffrage movement by passing the Civil Rights Act in 1957. The Act made it a federal crime to interfere with a citizen's right to vote or be elected and established the Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of the law. Another Act passed in 1960 banned interfering with citizen's right to vote (Nowak and Rotunda, 1995). Gradually, black civil rights movement grew more organized and the civil rights struggle made a significant turn: while in the 1950s civil rights actions, such as Montgomery boycott, were spontaneous, the 1960s saw a series of well-organized actions.  

The Discovery of the Structure of DNA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

The Discovery of the Structure of DNA - Essay Example DNA consists of two strands, each composed of certain sugars and phosphates. The two strands wind around each other in a spiral, much like the two sides of the ladder wind around each other. Linking the two strands together are certain chemical elements called amines or bases arranged in a particular pattern. The rungs of the rubber ladder would be like these chemical links," (Ciccarelli p.252). An understanding of DNA is a fundamental necessity in understanding what it is that makes us who we are. Not the acts which we commit, but really who were imbedded in the core of ourselves. Ultimately, the genetic design of us as human beings is what truly the history book is as it comes to humans and what makes them who they are. Structural DNA is described as, "Some regions of chromosomes remain highly condensed, tightly coiled, and untranscribed throughout the cell cycle. Called constitutive heterochromatin, these portions tend to be localized around the centromere, or located near the ends of the chromosome, at the telomeres," (Johnson p.387). After Rosalind Franklin's use of x-ray technology as it came to DNA, the world would be introduced to two gentlemen by the names of James Watson and Francis Crick. "Learning informally of Franklin's results before they were published in 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick, two young investigators at Cambridge University, quickly worked out a likely structure for the DNA molecule (figure 14.10), which we now know was substantially correct. They analyzed the problem deductively, first building models of the nucleotides, and then trying to assemble the nucleotides into a molecule that matched what was known about the structure of DNA. They tried various possibilities before they finally hit on the idea that the molecule might be a simple double helix, with the bases of two strands pointed inward towards each other, forming base-pairs," Elaborating further that, "In their model, base pairs always consist of purines, which are large, pointing toward pyrimidines, which are small, keeping the diameter of the molecule a constant 2 nanometers. Because the hydrogen bonds can form between the bases in a base-pair, the double helix is stabilized as a duplex DNA molecule composed of two antiparallel strands, one chain running 3' to 5' and the other 5' to 3'. The base pairs are planar (flat) and stack 0.34 nm apart as a result of hydrophobic interactions, contributing to the overall stability of the molecule," (Johnson p.287). "The Watson-Crick model explained why Chargaff had obtained the results he had: in a double helix, adenine forms two hydrogen bonds with thymine, but it will not form hydrogen bonds properly with cytosine. Similarly, guanine forms three hydrogen bonds properly with thymine. Consequently, adenine and thymine will always occur in the same proportions in any DNA molecule, as will guanine and cytosine, because of this base-pairing," (Johnson p.287). Just as any scientist needs to do in order to prove their theory; Crick and Watson set out to do just that. "In late February of 1953, Crick and Watson built a model out of tin established the general structure of DNA. This structure explained all the known chemical properties of DNA, and it opened the door to understanding its biological functions. There have been minor amendments to that first published structure, but its