Goals Of The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement was a struggle for social justice that took place during the 1950s and 1960s for blacks to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The civil rights movement was a "freedom struggle" by African Americans to gain equality. Some major contributions and goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to empower black people, earn the right to vote, and create equal access to public places (Scholastic). After the Civil War, southern states treated African Americans as second-class citizens. They made laws that kept white and black people separate know as the “Jim Crow Laws”. They separated schools, restaurants, and transportation based on the color of a person’s skin. A great example of black empowerment is Rosa Parks, because she invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955. Another example would be Martin Luther King Jr. He was the most important voice of the American civil rights movement, and he was famous for using nonviolent resistance to overcome injustice. After he was

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak. It often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of blacks in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo. Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens