The Civil Rights movement was a mass movement brought about by African American people all over the country who were fed up with the government and how they treated them, and they were angry and tired of being discriminated against in their daily lives by businesses and white people. From 1955-1965 the Civil Rights phase called the Black Liberation movement became the central in getting African Americans to stand up and fight for their Civil Rights. The movement used two main strategies, legalism and mass direct action, to work against the American apartheid. These strategies were a part of many of the campaigns for civil rights and were the reason for the success that they achieved. There are many components to a social movement and the Black Liberation movement could not have made the difference that it did in America without them. One of the most successful components was the boycotts that African Americans and other civil rights supporters carried out on businesses. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus is one of the most famous events of the Civil Rights movement. Although she was not the first African American to refuse to give up their seat in 1955 she boarded the bus and made history, and her arrest sparked the African American community to take a firm action and boycott the bus lines. The Boycott lasted 13 months, in which the MIA, Montgomery Improvement Association, and African Americans pulled together by car pooling and even having people from other states send cars and other transportation support to help the people stick to the boycott since buses at the time were one of the main modes of transportation in the African American community. The Montgomery Bus Boycotts showed African Americans what they could accomplish with the mass direction of people supporting the boycott strategy to help along the Black Liberation movement. To get things in America to change African Americans needed laws to be changed so that civil rights were something every American had. Civil disobedience was one of the ways in which the Black liberation movement drew attention to a system of legal discrimination. One effective way that demonstrated the injustice of society was the sit-in movement that was a strategy that Martin luther King Jr. supported. On february 1, 1960 at a woolworth's store in North Carolina four African American college students sat at a all white section and asked for service which was denied to them because of their race. They didn't leave they just sat at the counter and started a movement. In the sit-ins that followed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organized more sit-ins where the goal was to remain nonviolent even when customers would pelt them with food and make foul comments, and if they were arrested then more students would be there to take their seats and ask for service. The key to this act of civil disobedience was to not act out and remain seated so that when the media came and people across the country got a look at what was happening they would see white people acting like animals and not the other way around. Legally these students could be arrested and some of them were which drew mass attention to the injustice of the system with newspapers and television showing college students getting arrested for just sitting in a white section. Movements like the sit in movement had no negative affect on the African American communities image to those who understood the point because there was no violence on their part and no condemnable act. In 1965 the Selma to Montgomery marches drew mass media attention to the Black Liberation cause. The march lead by John Lewis and the Reverend Hosea Williams, was to bring support for the Selma Voting Rights Movement, but it ended up becoming known as “Bloody Sunday” for the violence that was broadcasted from the march. The march was
