The civil rights movement was a popular historical movement that worked to allow African Americans to have equal rights and privileges as U.S. citizens. The movement can be defined as a struggle against racial segregation and discrimination that began in the 1950s. Although the origins of the civil rights movement go back to the 1800s, the movement peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led the movement from local to national levels. Many actions of the civil rights movement were concentrated through legal means such as negotiations, appeals, and nonviolent protests. When we think of leaders or icons of the movement we usually think of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Even though Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are important figures, their participation in the movement was minimal compared to other unknown or forgotten figures. Howell Raines’s, My Soul Is Rested, contains recollections of voices from followers of the civil rights movement. These voices include students, lawyers, news reporters, and civil right activists. Although the followers of the movement were lesser known, the impact they made shaped the society we live in today.
The Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Right Movement gave equality to black people. This changed the way they were treated specially in the south. Many people have heard about this movement, but there is only a few amount of people that actually know what it really is. The civil Rights Movement was a struggle to achieve equal opportunity in employment, housing, education, public, facilities, and even having the right to vote (Civil Rights Movement)
Social movement is a key driver of social change. Social movement can be defined as groups of individuals or organizations that have a main focus on political or social issues. The movements build off of a collective behavior to promote a particular idea that is to be implemented on a society wide scale. The Civil Rights movement is perhaps the most well-known social movement occurring in the 1960s. Its success led to the creation of many more social movements that used similar tactics to push their ideas.
“Rosa Louise Parks is nationally recognized as the mother of the modern-day civil rights movement in America” (Reed, 1994). In December 1955, Parks was arrested because she refused to give her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Parks was involved in decades of political work before the boycott due to her activist husband and her family influence. Throughout her life, she was mistreated several times because of her color. In 1943, she was told she did not pass the literacy test, which was a Jim Crow invention to keep blacks from voting; even though in 1945, she passed the test and became one of the few blacks able to exercise the "right" to vote (Dreier, 2006).The dissident action of Parks was courageous and her performance
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s was a mass mobilization and unification of people from varying backgrounds fighting for equal rights and equal opportunity for Black Americans. Black male leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. preached about equality and challenged people to consider social injustices within society. The leadership qualities and influence of Dr. King are undeniable. His rhetoric united Black America and identified their entitlement to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Dr. King’s inspiring speech for Black’s to “one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”, motivated White and Black
the civil rights movement dramatically changed the face of the nation and gave a sense of dignity and power to black Americans. Most of all, the millions of Americans who participated in the movement brought about changes that reinforced our nation’s basic constitutional rights for all Americans- black and white, men and women, young and old.
On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks got on the bus as usual. When a white person wanted her to get up, she refused without using force. She sat there and did not budge until the police came. To do this was easier said than done. Take into consideration what could've happened. Parks could've been hurt very badly because segregation was legal. Rosa Parks, however, ignored these possibilities and took action. Rosa's courage started a movement for civil rights. Shortly after her action, blacks began a bus boycott, which resulted in new laws to be passed, slowly giving them equality like they deserved. If Rosa Parks hadn't done this, though, none of this would've occurred. It would've been another day and Rosa would simply leave her seat to allow a white person to sit there. Our country might still be segregated and blacks wouldn't have the same rights as everyone else. To get action done, Rosa needed to show her courage. She needed to be bold and take risks. She used her courage to make a change, a change that would affect every single person around our country. Rosa Parks clearly needed to use courage on that bus in
Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. “Jim Crow” laws at the local and state levels barred them from classrooms and bathrooms, from theaters and train cars, from juries and legislatures. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that formed the basis for state-sanctioned discrimination, drawing national and international attention to African Americans’ rights (Foner and Garraty). Many leaders from within the African American community and beyond rose to prominence during the Civil Rights era, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Andrew Goodman and others. They risked—and sometimes lost—their lives in the name of freedom and equality (National Archive). The most important achievements of African-American Civil Rights Movement have been the post-Civil War constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and established the citizenship status of blacks and the judicial decisions and legisl...
The Civil Rights Movement was started because of racial segregation and a fight for equal rights. The Civil Rights Movement lasted 1954-1965. It ended when the president signed the civil rights act and also signed the voting right acts. The voting rights act was when blacks couldn’t vote. Organizations that were involved in the civil rights movement were the NAACP, the SCLC, the SNCC, and the MIA. Martin Luther king was an important role in the civil rights movement because he helped overcome segregation even though he used nonviolence to demonstrate the things he done. Malcolm X didn’t use violence unless it was needed so martin Luther king and Malcolm X had different point of views. The civil rights movement lasted only a year but helped for blacks and ending segregation which was very important because this was one step closer to ending racism. The main people who started the civil rights movement were Emmit Till, The Brown vs. Board cases, and Rosa parks. The point I am trying to prove is that Emmit Till started and or sparked the civil rights movement.
The Transformation of the American Society was drastically effected by the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movements that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. These movements gained momentum quickly as public sentiment saw the everlasting war in Vietnam and the domestic violence within the country as unneccessary.