The Civil Rights movement became significant in the late 1950's and 1960's. It was a movement that rebelled against the prevalent view that African-Americans were discriminated against and that such discrimination was not only accepted, but considered legal. It entailed different stages of awareness and participation. From the Supreme Court's decision in the Brown case (1954) that declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional to the waves of awareness brought about by specific individuals such as Dr. Martin Luther King, who was nationally recognized. To individuals such as Rosa Parks, who took an individual stance of resistance, along with hundreds and later thousands of individuals who simply refused to go along with the institutionalized racism that was widespread, particularly in the South.
The movement emphasized for the most part a discipline of non-violence. Through peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins that often became violent as a result of the police actions involved more and more persons became aware of the injustice that was prevalent simply based on race.
The movement is recognized as causing a change in the law of the United States. For example, with legislation such as the Civil Rights Acts and the Civil Voting Rights Act. It also started societal changes. It's effects and causes are still prevalent today.
It was an agitation for an end to inequality based on color.
The civil rights movement refers to the mass protest of the 1950’s and 1960’s by minorities in the USA such as African-Americans, and Native Americans. The main grievances were racial segregation in areas such as voting, employment opportunities, and public transport. Some of the prominent faces of the movement were Martin Luther King and Bob Moses.
The origin of the protests was deeply enshrined in the fabric of the nation, with historians pointing out that it originated in the failures of reconstruction. Specifically, the compromise of 1877, amongst other things informally granted the southern states, the power to deal with their African-American populations in whichever they pleased.
Consequently, blacks population in the southern states was systematically denied voting rights, through both coercion and militia activities. Prominent militias such as Ku Klux Klan and white league emerged in the south to ensure this there being. Schools and busing were disaggregated, and for the next decades, African Americans had either the option of persevering of fleeing to the North, in what is known as the great migration. The cultural revolutions of the 1920’s and the rise of liberal governments in the 1930’s served to ignite the movements.
However, the efforts of administrations of Truman and Eisenhower to introduce racial parity were often met with resistance from conservative congressional members. The movement became increasingly vocal in the 1950’s and seminal cases such as Robinson, first baseball player, served to fuel the movement.
When JFK rose to power and was assassinated, his successor Johnson had a greater idea. He innovated what he called the great society which targeted an American society free of racial segregation, with higher standards of living, and housing solutions for poor Americans. While these policies were a success in the north, the south deliberately denied African American voting rights and segregated public schools and public transport systems. Civil rights leader of all walks of life, led by MLK and other whites student begun the famous freedoms rides, which resulted in the death of several of them.
The civil rights movement culminated in Johnson spearheading the equal voting rights of 1965, which cooled the tensions albeit until the American Indians took the course.
The Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1950s and 1960s used non-violent civil disobedience to try to gain the same rights for blacks that whites in the U.S. enjoyed.
One of the goals of the movement was ending segregation in the South. Blacks objected to not being served at white lunch counters, not being allowed to swim in white pools, not being allowed to stay in white hotels, and not being allowed to attend white schools. To publicize their protest and put pressure on politicians to change laws, blacks deliberately entered white spaces and refused to leave. Famously, for example, Rosa Parks would not move to the back of the bus where blacks were legally required to sit in Montgomery, Alabama, and ended up arrested, sparking a bus boycott and publicizing the unjustness of such laws. In another example, black protesters trained in non-violence sat and asked to be served at a white lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they encountered abuse without fighting back and raised sympathy for their cause.
The Civil Rights movement also fought for black voting rights, which were often denied in Southern states. Beyond that, the movement fought against discrimination in the workplace and the housing market. The campaigns were largely successful in influencing Congress to pass legislation that made racial discrimination illegal, but may have been less successful in changing white people's hearts about blacks.
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