Civil Rights Movement Research Paper

Darling Garcia
June 6, 2018
Mr. Cohen
History
Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement was a time where African Americans struggled in the 1950s to late 1960s to achieve civil rights equal to those of whites. African Americans wanted equal opportunities such as employment, education, the right to vote, the rights to use the same public facilities as whites, and the right to be free of racial discrimination. Public facilities of all kinds were segregated in the South during this time period- movie theaters, water fountains, restrooms, lunch counters, trains, schools, and buses. The Civil Rights Movement was organized by African Americans in rather of waiting for the court to end segregation. The Civil War had officially

The majority of blacks in this time requested to attend an all-white school rather than attend an all-black school. Linda Brown, a young African American student in Topeka, wanted to be able to attend to a white school rather than going to a black student school which were farther than the other schools that white students attended to. The state had directed Linda to cross a railroad yard and then to take a bus to school twenty blocks away. In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal” (History). The supreme court also ruled that this law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees all Americans equal treatment under the law. Schools were such public facilities, and Brown was refused admittance to the all-white school. Oliver Brown, the father of Linda Brown, claimed that “schools for black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called “equal protection clause” of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”(History). The National Association for the

Since she refused to give the seat to the man, she was arrested for violating the law, and her action inspired others to do a boycott of the city’s buses, that became known as The Montgomery Bus Boycott. The leaders of the African-American community, including man ministers, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the boycott. The bus boycott “helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation in public facilities. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP’s highest award” (Biography). Martin Luther King, a young Baptist minister, chosen from activists, emerged as a leader of the protest for the bus boycott. The boycott lasted 381 days. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public buses was illegal. Parks did not plan her action, but it was something injustice that led the way for others and, she has been called “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement” ever