Essay on Civil Rights Movement

Submitted By pamela1987
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Pages: 8
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African American Civil Rights Movement

In 2008, we welcomed our very first African American President for the United States. On January 20, 2009, President Obama took oath of running the office for the next four years. Barack Obama’s inauguration set a record attendance for any events that has taken place in Washington, DC because people were witnessing history in the making. Attending the inauguration to watch the first African American President has never been done before and this is something for those who have attended could share for years to come. There was a time when people couldn’t even imagine of such an event taking place in the US. 1619 marked the first year for Africans arriving to Virginia as slaves. Slavery would then last for the next 244 years until former President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to end it. Since then, discrimination has been a part of our lives. Black and whites weren’t allowed to sit together, walk together, date one another or even work together. Throughout these events, there were a few strong leaders to help end discrimination and build the African American Civil Rights Movement. (Brunner, African-American History Timeline, 2012) Harriet Tubman (1849), Abraham Lincoln (1863), W.E.B. Dubois (1905), Jackie Robinson (1947), Rosa Parks (1955) and Dr. Martin Luther King (1963) are just some of the political leaders to start the Civil Right Movement. They were the ones who fought for what was right, they were the ones who put their lives on the line for justice and they’re the ones who till this day, are respected. African Americans were treated like trash! The black women would be forced to have sex with the white man and if she was pregnant with his child then she would have to abort it. The black children were not allowed to go to school because he/she had to work on the field. The men were whipped for absolutely no reason; it was just a way for the Caucasians to show whose boss. Harriet Tubman could not take it anymore. She refused to be another person’s slave and escaped to become a free woman. Harriet Tubman was known as the “Moses of her people” and over the course of ten years, she let hundreds of slaves to freedom by using the “Underground Railroad.” Tubman put her life at risk just so that he can help others get what’s rightfully theirs; freedom. Harriet Tubman was a very brave woman in fact; she was a spy for the federal force in South Carolina as well as a nurse. I don’t think Tubman even realizes how big of an impact she has made as a Civil Rights Leader. (Harriet Tubman Imaging a Life (Hardcover) Book) In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery and to finally allow all the African Americans to have all the rights that they deserve. This was the beginning to something great. No longer should a colored man be a white man’s slave. No longer should a colored man get beaten, and no longer shall a child be refused of receiving education; although, this is what people thought. Even with the Emancipation Proclamation, discrimination was still going on. The blacks and whites couldn’t do anything together. If a white woman was attracted to a black man, then the white men would beat or kill the black man. Black students could not be in the same classroom as the white students, nor could they play with each other. The black people still didn’t have the rights to vote, in fact, they couldn't they couldn’t even sit next to a white person on the bus. What seemed like a new beginning was really more so the same. It was in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment declared that all those who were born in the US were declared American citizens, even those who were born as slaves. By 1870, African Americans finally had the rights to vote. Slowly by surely, changes were being made. In 1905 W.E.B. Dubois founded the Niagara Movement which is the black civil rights organization. The Niagara Movement advocated "the total
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