Understanding the Civil Rights Movement: Struggles and Triumphs

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Civil Rights Movement The civil rights was a struggle by African Americans to gain civil rights equal to those of whites. They were wanting equal opportunity in employment, housing, and education. The African Americans wanted the right to vote, equal access to public facilities, and to be free of racial discrimination. The movement peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement was the largest social movement of the 20th century in the United States (Davis). The civil rights movement focused on the American South. Starting in the late 19th century, local and state governments passed segregation laws, called Jim Crow laws, or the black codes. The black codes segregated whites and blacks in education, housing, and the use of public …show more content…

The movement’s first major legal victory came when the NAACP won in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The decision banned racial segregation in public schools. White people around the country did not like the choice. In the South a white supremacist group known as the Ku Klux Klan was organized to resist integration. The primary target was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Civil Rights …show more content…

This was caused by Rosa Parks. She had refused to give her seat to a white man and move to back of the bus so she was arrested. The bus boycott lasted for a total of three hundred and eighty one days! This showed the determination of the black folks to gain their civil freedom and rights. It also led to the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta, GA in 1957. Martin Luther King, Jr. took the responsibilities of president of the SCLC. He believed in nonviolent protest. He wanted people to fight using peaceful actions. In 1956, the Supreme Court said the segregation on buses was illegal (Black History Civil Rights Movement). A major incident in 1960 led to the founding of another important organization. On February 1, 1960, four freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College began a wave of student sit-ins designed to end segregation at southern lunch counters. They would not leave until they were served. These protests spread rapidly throughout the South and led to the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April of 1960

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