Article analysis
Rosa Luxemberg
One year after the October revolution in Russia, a sailor started a mutiny in Germany which led to the onset of a revolutionary upsurge where Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht emerged as key leaders. Rosa Luxemburg was born on March 5th, 1871, and grew to be a major player in the Russian revolution (Kremerer 1). Her arrest in 1915 did little to discourage her determination as she continued to spread her influence through letters (Kremerer 1). In one of her letters, she wrote on the importance of equality, stating that freedom for only those in government and their supporters was not freedom at all, regardless of their numbers. She further believed that freedom was anyone who thought differently and her actions sought to ensure that all individuals, including those that did not support the government, were free.
Luxembourg's death in 1919 did little to stop the spread of her ideologies and only ended up making her a martyr (Kremerer 3). After being interrogated and tortured at Eden Hotel, Luxemburg was beaten to death with a riffle and her body was disposed of into the Landwehr Canal. While this was intended to end her influence, she became a martyr to those in the communist cause and even had a bigger influence in death.
Her strong influence was mainly due to how passionate she was about equality and her strong position against capitalism. As a representative of the left-wing socialist, she fought to bring an end to the dictatorial and anti-democratic tendencies that existed within the Bolsheviki (Obrien 5). She sought to bring an end to the corruption of power and deprivation of rights by creating a new world that followed political strategies and economic laws that sought to bring about equality above all else.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is one of the major figures in the Civil Rights Movement and her bravery and influence continues to inspire people across the world. She not only called on people to be brave in the fight oppression but also led by example when she refused to give up her seat. Born on February 4th, 1913, her experience in Tuskegee, Alabama exposed her to all the challenges that result from oppression based on race (Feuerherd 1). She lacked access to basic education and her mother had to step in as a teacher before joining the school at Pine Level which was only a single room. She was, however, able to finish school and even attain a degree with the assistance of her husband, Raymond Parks.
Rosa Parks is mostly remembered for the incident in December 1955 when she was taking a bus home from work. During this time, laws and policies favored whites and it was expected that people of color give up their seats for the whites as they were considered more superior. When the bus driver asked Rosa Parks and two people of color to give up their seats, she refused and went on to state that she had grown tired of giving in to the oppression from the whites (Feuerherd 1). She was later arrested and taken to court. During this time, E.D Nixon, who was the leader of the NAACP held a boycott and called for all members of the African Ameican Community to refuse to ride the bus in support of Rosa Parks (Feuerherd 1). The success of the boycott proved to the NAACP that boycotts could have a significant impact and decided to start an even longer boycott to bring about positive and permanent change.
On the trial day, there were over 500 local reporters who showed up in court who not only covered the proceedings but also supported Rosa Parks and her decision to make a stand (Schudson, 1). The exposure, however, failed to dissway the court, and Parks was found guilty because refusing to give up a seat from a white person was a violation of the local ordinance that governed the community. This led to the boycott being extended to 381 days after her trial and buses ran empty as a result (Feuerherd 1). Attempts made to end the boycott such as burning down Martin Luther King Jr.’s house and African American churches only saw more people commit to the boycott. It was not until the city lifted enforcement on the segregation in buses on December 20th, 1956 that the boycott ended (Schudson 1). A decision as simple as refusing to give up a seat brought to an end to one aspect of segregation in a community dominated by whites.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15th, 1820 in Adams Massachusetts to a family of eight children (Quanquin 3). Despite being brought up in a community that denied women access to education, her father was a firm believer in equal rights regardless of gender and enrolled her in a private school in Philadelphia. Her work as an activist for women's rights begun in 1851 after she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Styer 7). The two worked together to try and reform state laws that discriminated against women in New York. Together, Susan and Stanton organized state campaigns and gave speeches that advocated for legal reforms.
Susan fought to end the culture that saw women grow up to become dependent on men and she tried to teach women how to rely on themselves instead of depending on men. She believed that the dependence of men is what gave them power and while her fight for equality was like any other by various advocates for equality, she faced great challenges due to what the term ‘equal’ meant in that era (Quanquin ). For equality to be achieved, it required whites and those in the middle and upper social status to give up some of their power and control to people who were regarded as unfit or inferior. It meant that women and African Americans would now have the right to weigh in on decisions on matters relating to society and this made it even more difficult for the idea of quality to be implemented.
Although Susan started as an abolitionist, her commitment to bringing about equality led to her becoming one of the most renowned and influential suffragists in history. Her commitment to the cause saw her travel to different parts of the United States using wagons and stagecoaches giving speeches. She devoted her life to giving women the right to vote and also promoting equality. Other than giving speeches, she also wrote newspapers and even cast a ballot even when it was illegal for women to vote.
Qiu Jin
Qiu Jin is considered as one of the greatest revolutionary women in China and a hero to some. After being bound and forced into marriage, she later left her husband and moved to japan to study. After returning to China, Jin became an activist and joined various secret societies that wanted to overthrow the Qing dynasty. She also engaged with women on different occasions and urged them to take control and resist oppression. In 1907, Jin was executed when her plan to engage in an armed revolt against the Qing dynasty was exposed (Moeller 2). Her death, however, did little to end the revolution she had already stated.
After Jin was killed, two of her friends sought to offer her a proper burial. Although the burial took place months after Jin was beheaded, hundreds of people came for the memorial service and was considered by the government as a form of public protest (Moeller 2). The two friends responsible for the memorial, Wu Zhiying, and Xu Zihua, were placed in the government’s wanted list and forced to live in hiding. Four years after her death, the republican revolution gained popularity and Qui Jin was recognized as a martyr in China’s fight for revolution.
In China today, Qiu Jin’s story is used as a form of educational text for students, and her image is used in various films and on-stage performances. She is regarded as a transitional figure that helped bring to an end the plight caused by the Qing dynasty (Ying 1). Her death also symbolizes the end of a time where Chinese women were oppressed to the beginning of a new era where the new modern Chinese woman had more rights and freedoms.
Work cited
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Hu, Ying. "Writing Qiu Jin's Life: Wu Zhiying and Her Family Learning." Late Imperial China, vol. 25 no. 2, 2004, p. 119-160. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/late.2005.0005.
Kemmerer, Alexandra. “Editing Rosa: Luxemburg, the Revolution, and the Politics of Infantilization” European Journal of International Law, Volume 27, Issue 3, August 2016, Pages 853–864, https://academic.oup.com/ejil/article/27/3/853/2197260
Moeller, Karilyn. “Chinese women unbound: An analysis of women’s emanci[pation in china” The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal, 2017, retrieevd from, https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=inquiry
O’Brien, Robert. “Revisiting Rosa Luxemburg’s Internationalism.” Journal of International Political Theory, Mar. 2019, doi:10.1177/1755088219833416
Quanquin, Hélène. “Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights”, Journal of American History, Volume 100, Issue 3, December 2013, Pages 844– 845, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jat503
Schudson, Michael. “Telling Stories about Rosa Parks.” Contexts, vol. 11, no. 3, Aug. 2012, pp. 22–27, doi:10.1177/1536504212456177.
Steyer, Meridith. “Susan B. Anthony’s extemporaneous speaking for women suffrage” Taylor & Francis, 2017, retrieved from, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07491409.2017.1368762?scroll=top &needAccess=true&journalCode=uwsc20
