CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement in America was a prolonged and non-violent struggle, to extend the full access to civil rights and equality before the law to the groups such as African American citizens that do not have the access before. There have been numerous movements for different groups in America, but the term is generally used to refer to the efforts to end discrimination against African Americans and to end racial segregation, especially in the southern United States that took place between the years 1955 and 1968. The period usually begins with the bus boycott in Montgomery in 1955 and ends with the murder of Martin Luther King in 1968, although the civil rights movement in America continues in many different ways today.

The first issue raised in the city of Montgomery, State of Alabama. According to the Southern custom, which was the law in Alabama, blacks had to give the front seats to white passengers in the bus. However, Rosa Parks, a black woman denied in 1955 to surrender his seat. Rosa Parks was arrested for resisting arrest and violating municipal ordinances. This incident becomes the trigger for a new tactic: a boycott, which would mobilize the black population under the leadership of Baptist minister Martin Luther King against the city's public transport. The black boycott of Montgomery lasted more than a year, during which blacks moved by other means of transport. King believed that collaboration should be paid to a "perverse system" that "anyone who accepts malevolence is as passive as committed to him as one who helps to perpetrate it. He did not support acts of violence and followed the non-violent directions of Mahatma Gandhi with Christian ethics as a philosophy of action to promote racial equality (Hohenstein, 2005).

The boycott ended with a great victory for blacks, the city had to yield. In 1956, the Supreme Court declared the laws of the State of Alabama and local that required segregation on buses were unconstitutional. Thus, white and black passengers had to be admitted on equal terms. Moreover, the boycott was important because it captured the attention of the country and around the world to highlight the situation endured by blacks in the American "democracy". After this victory, the influence of Martin Luther King becomes the symbol of a philosophy and successful tactic against racial discrimination.

The black's nonviolent protest was able ...