Historians offer different perceptions of the significance of Martin Luther King and the 1963 March on Washington. Without examining this event within its historical context the media publicity and iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech can easily overshadow progress that was already underway in America. It was insisted by prominent civil rights activist Ella Baker, ‘the movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement.’ What is important not to overlook is the significant change that took place in the United States during the previous 100 years. Such that, many influential figures in support of racial equality opposed the March. The Civil Rights Act proposed by President Kennedy in 1963 was already in the legislative process. Furthermore the Federal Government was now reasserting power over the entire of the United States by enforcing a policy of desegregation. It is important to note that these changes all took place less than one hundred years after the Thirteenth Amendment in 1965 abolished slavery, and the Fourteenth amendment in 1968 acknowledged the rights of former slaves to be acknowledged as U.S citizens. With this level of progress Kennedy was against the March going ahead due to the argument that it was limited in what it could achieve. Today, King’s 1963 Speech is viewed as one of the most iconic speeches in history. However, was it a key turning point in African Americans achieving racial equality? Federal endorsement would suggest yes after decades of southern states being able to subvert the Federal law designed to break down segregation. This support built upon the corner stones of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments in the nineteenth century. Therefore looking at the national status of black Americans fro... ... middle of paper ... ... was also the clearest way of drawing the Federal Government to the support for the civil rights campaign and the large force that black Americans represented. However, I do not believe that this alone achieved racial equality in America. It is easy to overlook the work of organisations such as the SNCC and SCLC. These played a crucial part in helping to invoke protest that developed in the form of widespread civil disobedience campaigns. Moreover the impact of two World Wars acted as a catalyst as they changed the World and America’s position in it. It created a domestic issue for the United States that needed to be dealt with. America as an emerging Superpower could no longer continue like this. However what is clear is that King’s beautifully articulated speech combined with the mass participation in the March created a day that captured the World’s imagination.
On April 4, 1968 America experienced the tragic loss of one of its greatest social leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a pivotal leader in the civil rights movement who permeated American history as a man who maintained the importance of nonviolent social change. He fought racism within the public domain by pursuing school integration and basic civil rights for the African-American community. Thirty-one years after his death, America is forced to evaluate the exact implications of his legacy on modern society's attitudes towards race and race relations. Did the civil rights movement really promote positive changes in race relations? How far has American society really come?
In the book, Colaiaco presents the successes that Dr. King achieves throughout his work for Civil Rights. The beginning of Dr. King’s nonviolent civil rights movements started in Montgomery, Alabama when Rosa Parks refused to move for a white person, violating city’s transportation rules. After Parks was convicted Dr. King, who was 26 at the time, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). “For 381 days, thousands of blacks walked to work, some as many as 12 miles a day, rather than continue to submit to segregated public transportation” (18). This boycott ended up costing the bus company more than $250,000 in revenue. The bus boycott in Montgomery made King a symbol of racial justice overnight. This boycott helped organize others in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tallahassee. During the 1940s and 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) won a series of cases that helped put it ahead in the civil rights movement. One of these advancements was achieved in 1944, when the United States Supreme Court banned all-white primaries. Other achievements made were the banning of interstate bus seating segregating, the outlawing of racially restraining covenants in housing, and publicly supporting the advancement of black’s education Even though these advancements meant quite a lot to the African Americans of this time, the NAACP’s greatest accomplishment came in 1954 with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which overturned the Plessy vs.
In hindsight the build-up to 1963 is obvious; the tension had grown rather than diminished since the Emancipation Proclamation as new laws were enacted but slowly carried out or blatantly ignored. The centennial of the Proclamation was approaching, and the lack of follow-through by both Republicans and Democrats, in both the South and the North, brought disappointment, frustration, and anger. President Kennedy promised changes to housing discrimination but did not sign them into law until two years into his term and was not specific enough for it to bring actual change (p. 8). The black population’s faith in the government waned as they saw countries in Africa rebelling after World War II, the nearly nuclear war of the 1950s, and the Great Depression that lingered even longer for them than for the struggling white public. They were witnessing fighting and determination around the world without experiencing any liberty of their own. The struggle was a daily reality for the individual, and that fa...
The main goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to instate equality under the law. King was a figurehead for the Civil Rights Movement. King’s ability to organize factions into a force that was unaffected by violence greatly contributed to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. In a letter he wrote from a Birmingham jail, King describes the four steps to non-violent protest. The first step is “collection of the facts to determine whether an injustice exists.”i This relates to Thoreau’s critique of an unjust government. Thoreau believed that every machine had friction, yet “when the friction comes to have its machine…let us not have such a machine any longer.”ii In the case of civil rights, the government has the friction of racial inequalities. That friction had several machines which enables whites to prevail over African Americans. King’s second step was negation. Thoreau lived during a time when negotiation was non-existent. He met the government “once a year--no more--in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it.”iii In the case of Thoreau and King, their struggle could not be resolved by simple negotiation. The third step, as King calls it, was self purification.
Few things have impacted the United States throughout its history like the fight for racial equality. It has caused divisions between the American people, and many name it as the root of the Civil War. This issue also sparked the Civil Rights Movement, leading to advancements towards true equality among all Americans. When speaking of racial inequality and America’s struggle against it, people forget some of the key turning points in it’s history. Some of the more obvious ones are the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves in the North, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington D.C. in 1963. However, people fail to recount a prominent legal matter that paved the way for further strides towards equality.
The pentagon, a relatively recent american building, has twice as many bathrooms as are necessary. The famous government building was constructed in the 1940s, when segregation laws required that separate bathrooms to be installed for African Americans. Across the United States there are many examples of leftover laws and customs that reflect the racism that once permeated throughout American society. The civil rights movement beginning in the 1860’s after the American civil war is a pivotal point in American history, it was the struggle to create equality. Many key figures such as Martin Luther King but also Presidents and more radical activists, have influenced decisions yet some have stood out more than others. King is remembered by most for his charismatic personality and great oratory skills as shown by the ‘I have a dream’ speech made at the feet of the Lincoln monument, the President at the beginning if the conext who started the movement after the American civil war. Over the period prescribed historians have created two schools of thought over the significance of Martin Luther King. The traditional view adopted by historians such as August Meier and Clayborne Carson is that King was the most significant contributor to the movement. These historians hold the view that they do because Clayborne Carson was selected by Coretta King to direct and edit a series of papers called the Martin Luther King. More recently however there has been a different view on the significance of Martin Luther King, historians such as Peter Ling have revised the traditional perspective of King, they in turn believe that King was not the most significant cause in gaining lawful equality of African Americans. However there were other contributors s...
Kirk, J. (2007). Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement: controversies and debates. Basingstoke New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Over 200,000 demonstrators participated in the March on Washington in the nation’s capital on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to gain civil rights for African Americans. There was a wide diversity in those who participated, with a quarter of all the demonstrators being white (Ross). Even southern people came to contribute, which caused them to be harassed and threatened for coming to the march. The March on Washington became a very successful event for the rights of African Americans, and amended several peoples’ view-points towards the topic, even President John Kennedy’s.
One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written, African Americans were still fighting for equal rights in every day life. The first real success of this movement did not come until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 which was followed by many boycotts and protests. The largest of these protests, the March on Washington, was held on August 28, 1963 “for jobs and freedom” (March on Washington 11). An incredible amount of preparation went into the event to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people attending from around the nation and to deal with any potential incidents.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of the Brown v. the Board of Education. This was a very historical moment because their ruling eliminated, the "separate but equal " doctrine. Their ruling called for school integration, although most school were very slow in complying if they complied at all. The NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Color People, viewed this ruling as a success. The schools lack of the obedience toward this ruling, made it necessary for black activism to make the federal government implement the ruling, and possibly help close the racial gap that existed in places other than public schools. During one of the boycotts for equality, a leader emerged that would never be forgotten. Dr. Martin Luther King, who was leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, quickly became the spokesperson for racial equality. He believed that the civil rights movement would have more success if the black people would use non violent tactics. Some say he was adopting the style of Ghandi. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, was formed by King and other activist in 1957. They were a group of black ministers and activist who agreed to try and possibly help others see the effects of a non violent movement. Also following the strategies set by the SCLC, a group known as the SNCC or the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, began a string of sit-in and campaigns as the black population continued it's fight for equality. It was the undying efforts of the two groups that paved the way for the march on Washington. This march which drew a crowd of at least 200,000, was the place that Dr. King, gave his famous "dream speech." Both the SNCC, and the SCLC were victims of lots of threats and attempted attacks, yet they continued to pursue freedom in a non violent fashion. However near the late 60's they had another problem on their hands. There was a group of activist known as the Black Panthers who were not so eager to adopt the non-violent rule. The believed that the civil rights movement pushed by Dr. King and is non-violent campaign, which was meant to give blacks the right to vote and eliminate segregation, was not solving problems faced in poor black communities. This Black Panther group, stabled the term "black power", which was used a sort of uplifting for the black self esteem.
In his speech, he proclaimed a free and better nation of equality and that both races, the blacks and the whites, should join together to achieve common ground and to support each other instead of fighting against one another. King’s vision is that all people should be judged by their “personality and character and not by their color of skin”(‘I Have a Dream”). All points he made in his speech were so strong that lots of people were interested in his thoughts. He dreamed of a land where the blacks could vote and have a reason to vote and where every citizen would be treated the same and with the same justice. He felt that all Americans should be equal and that they should forget about injustice and segregation. He wanted America to know what the problems were and wanted to point out the way to resolve these problems.
Nearly three centuries ago, black men and women from Africa were brought to America and put into slavery. They were treated more cruelly in the United States than in any other country that had practiced slavery. African Americans didn’t gain their freedom until after the Civil War, nearly one-hundred years later. Even though African Americans were freed and the constitution was amended to guarantee racial equality, they were still not treated the same as whites and were thought of as second class citizens. One man had the right idea on how to change America, Martin Luther King Jr. had the best philosophy for advancing civil rights, he preached nonviolence to express the need for change in America and he united both African Americans and whites together to fight for economic and social equality.
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
It was a sunny almost crystal-clear morning on Wednesday, August 1963, racial tensions have been at an all-time high in the United States and pressure was on the government to take action and finally give African-Americans the Civil Liberties that the rest of the population enjoyed. It was the day the March on Washington took place and over 200,000 people marched in order to protest racial inequality. Near the end of the demonstration, an African American pastor, Martin Luther King walked up to give his seminal "I have a dream" speech and from that day forward, a whole community managed to convince the Kennedy Administration to enact laws that gave African-Americans their freedoms. Such a course of events really showed the importance of freedom
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...