Essay about The Civil Rights Movement Words | 9 Pages. for civil rights, a movement through which minorities fought for equal opportunity. How could America call itself “land of the free” when only the white man could socially and economically move upward? For minorities, this represented an immobile society May 12, · Essay Civil Rights Movement. blogger.com 2nd hour 32514 Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement in the ’s and ’s was necessary because of the fact that African Americans were being denied their rights as citizens during that time. This was mostly seen in the Souths system of legal segregation The Civil Rights Movement was a time dedicated to activism for equal rights and treatment of African- Americans in the United States. During this period, many people rallied for social, legal and political changes to prohibit discrimination and end segregation
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Civil Rights Movement in the United States, political, legal, and social struggle by black Americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality. The civil rights movement was first and foremost a challenge to segregation, the system of laws and customs separating blacks and whites that whites used to control blacks after slavery was abolished in the s.
During the civil rights movement, individuals and civil rights organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. Many believe that the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in and ended with the Voting Rights Act ofthough there is debate about when it began and whether it has ended yet. The civil rights movement has also been called the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and the Second Reconstruction.
Segregation was an attempt by white Southerners to separate the races in every sphere of life and to achieve supremacy over blacks. Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after a minstrel show character from the s who was an old, crippled, black slave who embodied negative stereotypes of blacks.
Segregation became common in Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in During Reconstruction, which followed the Civil WarRepublican governments in the Southern states were run by blacks, Northerners, and some sympathetic Southerners. The Reconstruction governments had passed laws opening up economic and political opportunities for blacks. By the Democratic Party had gained control of the government in the Southern states, and these Southern Democrats wanted to reverse black advances made during Reconstruction, essay on civil rights movement.
Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs went up to separate the races in every possible place. The system of segregation also included the denial of voting rights, known as disfranchisement. Between and all Southern states passed laws imposing requirements for voting that were used to prevent blacks from voting, in spite of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which had been designed to protect black voting rights.
These requirements included: the ability to read and write, which disqualified the many blacks who had not had access to education; property ownership, something few blacks were essay on civil rights movement to acquire; and paying a poll tax, which was too great a burden on most Southern blacks, who were very poor. As a final insult, the few blacks who made it over all these hurdles could not vote in the Democratic primaries that chose the candidates because they were open only to whites in most Southern states.
Because blacks could not vote, essay on civil rights movement, they were virtually powerless to prevent whites from segregating all aspects of Southern life. They could do little to stop discrimination in public accommodations, education, economic opportunities, or housing. The ability to struggle for equality was even undermined by the prevalent Jim Crow signs, which constantly reminded blacks of their inferior status in Southern society, essay on civil rights movement.
Segregation was an all-encompassing system. Conditions for blacks in Northern states were somewhat better, though up to only about 10 percent of blacks lived in the North, and prior to World War IIvery few blacks lived in the West. Blacks were usually free to vote in the North, but there were so essay on civil rights movement blacks that their voices were barely heard.
Segregated facilities were not as common in the North, but blacks were usually denied entrance to the best hotels and restaurants. Schools in New England were usually integrated, but those in the Midwest generally were not. Perhaps the most difficult part of Northern life was the intense economic discrimination against blacks.
They had to compete with large numbers of recent European immigrants for job opportunities and almost always lost. Blacks fought against discrimination whenever possible. One of the cases against segregated rail travel was Plessy v. In fact, essay on civil rights movement, separate was almost never equal, but the Plessy doctrine provided constitutional protection for segregation for the next 50 years.
To protest segregation, essay on civil rights movement, blacks created new national organizations. The National Afro-American League was formed in ; the Niagara Movement in ; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Essay on civil rights movement in In the National Urban League was created to help blacks make the transition to urban, industrial life.
The NAACP became one of the most important black protest organizations of the 20th century. It relied mainly on a legal strategy that challenged segregation and discrimination in courts to obtain equal treatment for blacks. An early leader of the NAACP was the historian and sociologist W.
Du Bois, essay on civil rights movement, who essay on civil rights movement in made powerful arguments in favor of protesting segregation as editor of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis. NAACP lawyers won court victories over voter disfranchisement in and residential segregation inbut failed to have lynching outlawed by the Congress of the United States in the s and s. These cases laid essay on civil rights movement foundation for a legal and social challenge to segregation although they did little to change everyday life.
In Charles H. In the NAACP created a separate organization called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that had a nonprofit, tax-exempt status that was denied to the NAACP because it lobbied the U.
Supreme Court, began to challenge segregation as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. When World War I began, essay on civil rights movement, blacks enlisted to fight for their country. However, black soldiers were segregated, denied the opportunity to be leaders, and were subjected to racism within the armed forces. During the war, hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks migrated northward in and to take advantage of job openings in Northern cities created by the war. This great migration of Southern blacks continued into the s.
Along with the great migration, blacks in both the North and South became increasingly urbanized during the 20th century. Inabout 85 percent of all Southern blacks lived in rural areas; by that percentage had decreased to about 42 percent.
In the North, about 95 percent of all blacks lived in urban areas in The combination of the great migration and the urbanization of blacks resulted in black communities in the North that had a strong political presence. The black communities began to exert pressure on politicians, voting for those who supported civil rights. These Northern black communities, and the politicians that they elected, helped Southern blacks struggling against segregation by using political influence and money.
The Great Depression of the s increased black protests against discrimination, especially in Northern cities. Blacks protested the refusal of white-owned businesses in all-black neighborhoods to hire black salespersons. During the same years, blacks organized school boycotts in Northern cities to protest the discriminatory treatment essay on civil rights movement black children.
The black protest activities of the s were encouraged by the expanding role of government in the economy and society. During the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the federal government created federal programs, such as Social Security, to assure the welfare of individual citizens.
Roosevelt himself was not an outspoken supporter of black rights, but his wife Eleanor became an open advocate for fairness to blacks, as did other leaders in the administration. The Roosevelt Administration opened federal jobs to blacks and turned the federal judiciary away from its preoccupation with protecting the freedom of business corporations and toward the protection of individual rights, especially those of the poor and minority groups.
Beginning with his appointment of Hugo Black to the U. Supreme Court inRoosevelt chose judges who favored black rights, essay on civil rights movement.
As early asthe courts displayed a new attitude toward black rights; that year the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Missouri was obligated to provide access to a public law school for essay on civil rights movement just as it provided for whites. A new emphasis on the equal part of the Plessy doctrine.
Blacks sensed that the national government might again be their ally, as it had been during the Civil War. When World War II began in Europe inessay on civil rights movement, blacks demanded better treatment than they had experienced in World War I, essay on civil rights movement.
Black newspaper editors insisted during and that black support for this war effort would depend on fair treatment. They demanded that black soldiers be trained in all military roles and that black civilians have equal opportunities to work in war industries at home. In A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union whose members were mainly black railroad workers, planned a March on Washington to demand that the federal government require defense contractors to hire blacks on an equal basis with whites.
To forestall the march, President Roosevelt issued an executive order to that effect and created the federal Fair Employment Practices Committee FEPC to enforce it. The FEPC did not prevent discrimination in war industries, but it did provide a lesson to blacks about how the threat of protest could result in new federal commitments to civil rights.
During World War II, blacks composed about one-eighth of the U. armed forces, which matched their presence in the general population. Although a disproportionately high number of blacks were put in non-combat, support positions in the essay on civil rights movement, many did fight.
The Army Air Corps trained blacks as pilots in a controversial segregated arrangement in Tuskegee, Alabama. During the war, all the armed services moved toward equal treatment of blacks, though none flatly rejected segregation. In the early war years, hundreds of thousands of blacks left Southern farms for war jobs in Northern and Western cities. In fact, more blacks migrated to the North and the West during World War II than had left during the previous war.
Although there were racial tension and conflict in their new homes, blacks were free of the worst racial oppression, and they enjoyed much larger incomes. After the war blacks in the North and West used their economic and political influence to support civil rights for Southern blacks.
Blacks continued to work against discrimination during the war, challenging voting registrars in Southern courthouses and suing school boards for equal educational provisions. The membership of the NAACP grew from 50, to aboutIn the NAACP won a major victory in Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed the white primary. A new organization, the Congress of Racial Equality COREwas founded in to challenge segregation in public accommodations in the North.
During the war, black newspapers campaigned for a Double V, essay on civil rights movement, victories over both fascism in Europe and racism at home. The war experience gave about one million blacks the opportunity to fight racism in Europe and Asia, a fact that black veterans would remember during the struggle against essay on civil rights movement at home after the war.
Perhaps just as important, almost ten times that many white Americans witnessed the patriotic service of black Americans. Many of them would object to the continued denial of civil rights to the men and women beside whom they had fought. After World War II the momentum for racial change continued. Black soldiers returned home with determination to have full civil rights.
President Harry Truman ordered essay on civil rights movement final desegregation of the armed forces in He also committed to a domestic civil essay on civil rights movement policy favoring voting rights and equal employment, but the U. Congress rejected his proposals. Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenged and overturned many forms of discrimination, but their main thrust was equal educational opportunities, essay on civil rights movement.
For example, in Sweat v. Painterthe Supreme Court decided that the University of Texas had to integrate its law school. Marshall and the Essay on civil rights movement Fund worked with Southern plaintiffs to challenge the Plessy doctrine directly, arguing in effect that separate was inherently unequal. The U.
grade 12 - THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
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The Civil Rights Movement was a pivotal time in American history, leading us toward the acceptance and advancement of African Americans in society, and eventually the same for other minority groups. The movement as a whole spanned from around the beginning of the ’s to around the beginning of the ’s Essay about The Civil Rights Movement Words | 9 Pages. for civil rights, a movement through which minorities fought for equal opportunity. How could America call itself “land of the free” when only the white man could socially and economically move upward? For minorities, this represented an immobile society Many women experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the movement and later Youth in the Civil Rights Movement At its height in the s, the Civil Rights Movement drew children, teenagers, and young adults into a maelstrom of meetings, marches, violence, and in some cases, imprisonment
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