Civil Rights Movement Research Paper

The Civil Rights Movement took place during 1954-1968. It was a mass popular movement to secure equal access to and opportunities for the basic privileges and right of U.S. citizens for African Americans. African American men and women worked along- side whites to organize and lead a movement at the national and local levels. They used legal means, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protest demonstrations. The movement was considered the largest social movement of the 20th century in the U.S.
It mainly centered on the American south, who still did not believe that African Americans deserved the same rights as the whites did. There was many segregation laws passed in the late 19th century known as the “Jim Crow Laws” these laws restricted …show more content…
Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, this was an issue concerning segregation in public schools. The ruling was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court stating “separate but equal,” After the ruling the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) tried to make schools in the south integrate. This did not go over so well, that within a year Governor Faubus of Arkansas closed the first high school that mixed with and black students.
The African American’s wanted what was promised to them in the Declaration of Independence “the promise that all men, even black men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, so they pushed for desegregation of lunch counters, busses, and public facilities such as toilets and water fountains.
December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give her seat up to a white bus rider, “Are you going to stand up?” the driver demanded. Rosa Parks looked straight at him and said: “No.” Flustered, and not quite sure what to do, Blake retorted, “Well, I’m going to have you arrested.” And Parks, still sitting next to the window, relied softly, “You may do that.” for her actions she was arrested and put into jail. After her arrest boycotting of the bus lines started. People begin walking to and from work instead of taking the bus, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged around this time he understood the larger significance of the boycott and quickly realized that the …show more content…
along with other civil rights activist founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), this was a group which was committed to gain full equal rights for African Americans with nonviolence. He remained at the head of the organization until his death in 1968. King worked with many civil rights and religious groups to organize the March on Washington which was for jobs and freedom, this was the shed light on the injustice that the African Americans continued to face across the country. This march is a factor of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. During this march is when Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous speech known as the “I Have a Dream”

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