Civil Rights Movement in the United States, was a political, legal, and social struggle to gain full citizenship rights for African Americans and to achieve racial equality. The civil rights movement was a challenge to segregation, the system of laws and customs separating blacks and whites.
During the civil rights movement, individuals and organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. Some believe that the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, there is still however some debate about when it began and whether it has ended yet. The civil rights movement has also been called the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and the Second Reconstruction.
Segregation was an attempt by white Southerners to separate the races in every sphere of life and to achieve supremacy over blacks. Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system. Segregation became common in Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
By 1877 the Democratic Party had gained control of government in the Southern states, and these Southern Democrats wanted to reverse black advances made during Reconstruction. To that end, they began to pass local and state laws that specified certain places ?For Whites Only? and others for ?Colored.? Blacks had separate schools, transportation, restaurants, and parks, many of which were poorly funded and inferior to those of whites. Over 75 years, Jim Crow signs went up to separate the races in every possible place.
The system of segregation also included the denial of voting rights, known as disfranchisement. Between 1890 and 1910 all Southern states passed laws imposing requirements for voting that were used to prevent blacks from voting, These requirements included: the ability to read and write, which disqualified the many blacks who had not had access to education; property ownership, something few blacks were able to acquire; and paying a poll tax, which was too great a burden on most Southern blacks, who were very poor. Because blacks could not vote, they were virtually powerless to prevent whites from segregating all aspects of Southern life.
Conditions for blacks in Northern states were somewhat better, up to 1910 only 10 percent of bl...
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...y?s administration and the Congress to pass the civil rights legislation proposed by Kennedy by planning a march in Washington for August 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a moving address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His ?I Have a Dream? speech .
Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963,and the new president, Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. It prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in education and employment.
After the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the focus of the civil rights movement began to change. Martin Luther King, Jr., began to focus on poverty and racial inequality in the North. In 1965 he joined protests against school discrimination in Chicago and the following year he led marches against housing discrimination in the same city.
For many activists the civil rights movement ended in 1968 with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Others said it was over after the Selma march, because after Selma the movement stopped achieving major change. Some, especially blacks, argue that the movement is not over yet because the goal of full equality has not been achieved.
The civil rights movement, by many people, is though to have happened during the 1950's and 1960's. The truth of the matter is that civil right has and always will be an ongoing issue for anyone who is not of color. The civil rights movement started when the black slave started arriving in America centuries ago. The civil rights movement is one of the most known about issues in American history. Everyone at some point in their life has studied this movement. This movement is particularly interesting due to the massive amounts of different stories and occurrences through the course of the movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a vital figurehead to this movement. He inspired many people who had lived their whole lives in the shadow of fear of change.
The Civil Rights Movement changed American Democracy today in its fight against racial segregation and discrimination. We still see racial discrimination today, but we don’t see much racial segregation. People like Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, and A Philip Randolph led the Civil Rights Movement with their abilities to coordinate and connect people. They fought for equality among men and women of all colors and religions.
The Civil Rights Movement symbolized the challenge and opposition to the racial injustices and segregation that had been engrained in American society for hundreds of years. Events that took place in the 1950s and 1960s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, sit-ins, speeches and numerous protests define this momentous time in United States history. Speeches during this period served as a means to inspire and assemble a specific group of people, for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X it was the black community that needed to rise up in hopes of achieving equal rights and voting rights for the blacks.
The answer served to the explanation of the establishment of the Jim Crow law, which is segregation in the Southern
Kennedy’s crusade began slowly to the dismay of many civil rights leaders in February of 1963. He began by sending the United States Congress a “Special Message on Civil Rights,” stating,
The Civil Rights Movement refers to the political, social, and economical struggle of African Americans to gain full citizenship and racial equality. Although African Americans began to fight for equal rights as early as during the days of slavery, the quest for equality continues today. Historians generally agree that Civil Rights Movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. It has been made up of many movements, though it is often used to refer to the struggles between 1945 and 1970 to end discrimination against African-Americans and to end racial segregation, especially in the U.S. South. It focuses on that particular struggle, rather than the comparable movements to end discrimination against other ethnic groups within the United States or those struggles, such as the women's liberation, gay liberation, and disabled rights movements, that have used similar tactics in pursuit of similar goals. The civil rights movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, both in its tactics and in increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights. One of the most important organizations of this era was the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). NAACP is an organization composed mainly of American blacks, but with many white members, whose goal is the end of racial discrimination and segregation.
Toward the end of the Progressive Era American social inequality had stripped African Americans of their rights on a local and national level. In the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessey vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court sided with a Louisiana state law declaring segregation constitutional as long as facilities remain separate but equal. Segregation increased as legal discriminatory laws became enacted by each state but segregated facilities for whites were far superior to those provided for blacks; especially prevalent in the South were discriminatory laws known as Jim Crow laws which surged after the ruling. Such laws allowed for segregation in places such as restaurants, hospitals, parks, recreational areas, bathrooms, schools, transportation, housing, hotels, etc. Measures were taken to disenfranchise African Americans by using intimidation, violence, putting poll taxes, and literacy tests. This nearly eliminated the black vote and its political interests as 90% of the nine million blacks in America lived in the South and 1/3 were illiterate as shown in Ray Stannard Baker’s Following the Color Line (Bailey 667). For example, in Louisiana 130,334 black voters registered in 1896 but that number drastically decreased to a mere 1,342 in 1904—a 99 percent decline (Newman ). Other laws prevented black...
The Civil Rights Movement had a lot going on between 1954 and 1964. While there were some successful aspects of the movement, there were some failures as well. The mixture of successes and failures led to the extension of the movement and eventually a more equal American society.
Events like 1954 Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed segregated education, and 1956’s, Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, which stemmed the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Civil Rights Movement is the story of the struggle of African-American people and their fight for equality. Although exceptional leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and Ralph Abernathy fought long and hard and carried the burden of the movement on their shoulders, they were not alone. The struggle was fueled by the commitment and the hard work of thousands of everyday people who decided that the time had come to take a stand.
The Civil Rights Movement began in order to bring equal rights and equal voting rights to black citizens of the US. This was accomplished through persistent demonstrations, one of these being the Selma-Montgomery March. This march, lead by Martin Luther King Jr., targeted at the disenfranchisement of negroes in Alabama due to the literacy tests. Tension from the governor and state troopers of Alabama led the state, and the whole nation, to be caught in the violent chaos caused by protests and riots by marchers. However, this did not prevent the March from Selma to Montgomery to accomplish its goals abolishing the literacy tests and allowing black citizens the right to vote.
Historically, the Civil Rights Movement was a time during the 1950’s and 60’s to eliminate segregation and gain equal rights. Looking back on all the events, and dynamic figures it produced, this description is very vague. In order to fully understand the Civil Rights Movement, you have to go back to its origin. Most people believe that Rosa Parks began the whole civil rights movement. She did in fact propel the Civil Rights Movement to unprecedented heights but, its origin began in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was the cornerstone for change in American History as a whole. Even before our nation birthed the controversial ruling on May 17, 1954 that stated separate educational facilities were inherently unequal, there was Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 that argued by declaring that state laws establish separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. Some may argue that Plessy vs. Ferguson is in fact backdrop for the Civil Rights Movement, but I disagree. Plessy vs. Ferguson was ahead of it’s time so to speak. “Separate but equal” thinking remained the body of teachings in America until it was later reputed by Brown vs. Board of Education. In 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and prompted The Montgomery Bus Boycott led by one of the most pivotal leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. After the gruesome death of Emmett Till in 1955 in which the main suspects were acquitted of beating, shooting, and throwing the fourteen year old African American boy in the Tallahatchie River, for “whistling at a white woman”, this country was well overdo for change.
The America¬¬¬n Civil Rights movement was a movement in which African Americans were once slaves and over many generations fought in nonviolent means such as protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and many other forms of civil disobedience in order to receive equal rights as whites in society. The American civil rights movement never really had either a starting or a stopping date in history. However these African American citizens had remarkable courage to never stop, until these un-just laws were changed and they received what they had been fighting for all along, their inalienable rights as human beings and to be equal to all other human beings. Up until this very day there are still racial issues were some people feel supreme over other people due to race. That however is an issue that may never end.
The African American Civil Rights Movement was a series of protests in the United States South from approximately 1955 through 1968. The overall goal of the Civil Rights Movement was to achieve racial equality before the law. Protest tactics were, overall, acts of civil disobedience. Rarely were they ever intended to be violent. From sit-ins to boycotts to marches, the activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement were vigilant and dedicated to the cause without being aggressive. While African-American men seemed to be the leaders in this epic movement, African-American women played a huge role behind the scenes and in the protests.