The Civil Rights Movement

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During the civil rights movement, individuals including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, American youth and women along with civil rights organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. African Americans during the 1960s, most communities around America segregated blacks and whites in public transportation, restaurants, and school. Discrimination prevented many from receiving equal consideration for education and employment. In some areas of the nation, a “poll tax” was used to prevent African Americans from voting in state and national elections. African Americans wanted to end segregation, discrimination, and bring about equal opportunities for all. In response to this unequal opportunity for blacks in the country many African Americans joined mutually in efforts to generate change. The 1960s saw an increase in organized efforts to strengthen the right of individuals. In April 1960 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was started in Raleigh, North Carolina, to help direct and organize the student sit-in movement. The sit-in movement also showed clearly to whites and blacks alike that young blacks were determined to reject segregation openly. After the sit-ins, some SNCC members joined in the 1961 Freedom Rides organized by CORE. The Freedom Riders, both black and white, traveled throughout the South in buses to test the effectiveness of a 1960 Supreme Court decision. This decision had declared that segregation was illegal in bus stations that were open to interstate travel. The national civil rights leadership decided to keep pressure on both the Congress and the Kennedy administration to pass the civil rights legislation proposed by Kennedy by planning a March on Washington for August 1963. Leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the Urban League, and SNCC as well as Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed their ideals for the civil rights of African Americans. Later on events like the Selma march created broad national support for a law to protect southern blacks' right to vote. President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended the use of literary and other voter qualification tests. After the passage of 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 their accomplishments although full equality has not yet been reached, the civil rights movement did put fundamental reforms in place.

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