Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

Civil rights politics in the United States has its roots in the movements to end discrimination against Blacks. Though slavery was abolished and former slaves were officially granted political rights after the Civil War, in most southern states, Blacks continued to be systematically disenfranchised and excluded from public life, leading them to become perpetual second-class citizens. By the 1950s, the marginalization of Blacks, often taking an extremely violent form, had spurred a social movement of epic proportions. The Black civil rights movement, based mainly out of the Black churches and colleges of the south, involved extensive efforts of civil disobedience, such as marches, boycotts, and sit-ins, as well as voter education and voting drives. Most of these efforts were local in scope, but the impact was felt at the national level—a model of civil rights organizing that has since spread all over the globe.

Civil Rights Movement

What major protest helped the civil right movement in the 1960's and how did they change the tide for the better?

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, KS (1954) decision, which stipulated that public schools should integrate with “all deliberate speed,” movement leaders realized they could not wait for politicians to fulfill this legal promise. During the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), African American domestic laborers and their supporters refused to ride the city's mass transit system. The economic pressure of the boycott caused the city's leaders to make concessions that, among other things, resulted in more equal treatment of African Americans aboard the city's buses. The symbolic gains of the boycott cannot be overstated: Participants had successfully called attention to the de jure segregation that pervaded Montgomery and reminded America of the inherent dignity and rights that should be accorded all of the country's citizens.

The momentum of Montgomery was checked 7 years later in Albany, Georgia. There, protestors encountered a white power structure that parried every thrust from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an organization dedicated to voter registration and education. SNCC participants, seeking the desegregation of the city's transportation systems, as well its libraries, parks, and medical facilities, were out-maneuvered by Sheriff Laurie Pritchett, who used the threat of jail to demoralize participants and sequester city officials from having to concede to any demands.

If Albany signaled the movement's low point, its apogee came less than 2 years later, in June 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. There, civil rights leaders punctuated a massive nonviolent campaign by using children to march against segregation. Like never before, the moral force of the movement was captured and framed through media portrayals of the brutality civil rights participants suffered. The images of women and children suffering dog attacks, the sting of fire hoses, and beatings by police mobilized public opinion. It was also in Birmingham where Martin Luther King, Jr., drafted his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in which he justified the risks and rewards of nonviolent direct action.

In late August 1963, the movement held its largest gathering in Washington, ...