The Civil Rights Movement
Introduction
The Civil Rights Movement was a mass popular movement to secure for African Americans equal access to and opportunities for the basic privileges and rights of U.S. citizenship. Although the roots of the movement go back to the 19th century, it peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led the movement at national and local levels.
Court Cases
During the 1890s, a number of other court decision and state laws severely limited African-American rights. In the Plessy V. Ferguson cases of 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that this "separate but equal" law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities are equal.
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was instrumental in ending legal segregation and became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. He guided the litigation that destroyed the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Through out of his life, Marshall used the law to promote Civil Rights and Social Justice. |
Fighting for Civil Rights
The Montgomery Bus Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. That was the day when the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being relegated to the back when a white boarded. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech was given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1942 in Chicago, the Congress of Racial Equality had staged the first sits-ins, in which African-American protesters sat down at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served. The SCLC conducted a major voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama. Where SNCC had been working for two years to register voters.
Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. He played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was assassinated in April 1968, and continues to be remembered as one of the most lauded African-American leaders in history, often referenced by his 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream."
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Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. The act significantly widened the franchise and is considered among the most far reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. They were not able to vote and if they tried the risked intimidation, economic reprisals, harassment, and physical abuse.
Challenges and Changes
De facto segregation that exists by practice and custom. De facto segregation can be harder to fight than de jure segregation because it requires changing people's attitudes rather than repealing laws. The Black Panthers believed that the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King had failed. The language of the Black Panthers was violent as was their public stance. At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
Malcolm XMalcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was a prominent black nationalist leader who served as a spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and '60s. Malcolm X exhorted blacks to cast off the shackles of racism "by any means necessary," including violence. Malcolm was a hero in many ways, he saved peoples lives, he taught many things, most important he made a difference. |