How Did Political Activism For African American Rights Change From The 1950s To The Early 1960s?
The ceremonious rights motility was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights nether the police force in the United States. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, merely information technology didn't end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating furnishings of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans had had more than than plenty of prejudice and violence against them. They, forth with many white Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades.
Picket: The Civil Rights Movement on HISTORY Vault
Jim Crow Laws
During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles similar never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.
In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, peculiarly those in the S, were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.
To marginalize Black people, go along them separate from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, "Jim Crow" laws were established in the South beginning in the tardily 19th century. Black people couldn't use the same public facilities equally white people, live in many of the same towns or become to the same schools. Interracial spousal relationship was illegal, and about Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.
READ More than: How Jim Crows Limited African American Progress
Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; all the same, Black people all the same experienced bigotry at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To brand matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.
Moreover, southern segregation gained footing in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could exist "separate but equal."
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Go the Right to Vote?
Globe War II and Civil Rights
Prior to Globe War 2, virtually Black people worked every bit depression-wage farmers, manufacturing plant workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, state of war-related work was booming, but most Blackness Americans weren't given the ameliorate paying jobs. They were likewise discouraged from joining the military machine.
Later thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Lodge 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defence jobs and other authorities jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.
Black men and women served heroically in Earth War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen bankrupt the racial barrier to become the starting time Black military machine aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with—to defend freedom and democracy in the world.
As the Common cold State of war began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.
READ MORE: Why Harry Truman Ended Segregation in the US Military
Rosa Parks
On December one, 1955, a 42-year-old adult female named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus subsequently work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the dorsum of the autobus, and Parks had complied.
When a white human got on the double-decker and couldn't find a seat in the white department at the front of the bus, the omnibus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to requite upwardly their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.
As discussion of her abort ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "female parent of the modern day civil rights movement." Blackness community leaders formed the Montgomery Comeback Association (MIA) led past Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and eye in the fight for ceremonious rights.
Parks' backbone incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery jitney organization. The Montgomery Passenger vehicle Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.
Little Stone Nine
In 1954, the civil rights motility gained momentum when the The states Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Fundamental High School in Little Stone, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black loftier schools to attend the formerly segregated schoolhouse.
On September 3, 1957, 9 Black students, known equally the Little Rock 9, arrived at Fundamental Loftier Schoolhouse to begin classes only were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on gild of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Petty Stone Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.
Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Fiddling Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Yet, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.
Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the event of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the result.
READ MORE: Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock After Brown v. Board
Civil Rights Act of 1957
Fifty-fifty though all Americans had gained the correct to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to accept literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.
Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.
On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.
Woolworth's Lunch Counter
Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February i, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, N Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter without being served.
Over the side by side several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit down-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated dejeuner counters until the owners caved and the original iv students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd first stood their ground.
Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights move. It likewise caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech communication in which he originated the phrase "Black power."
READ More than: How the Greensboro Four Demonstration Sparked a Motility
Freedom Riders
On May 4, 1961, 13 "Freedom Riders"—seven Black and six white activists–mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American s to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 determination by the Supreme Court in Boynton 5. Virginia that alleged the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.
Facing violence from both constabulary officers and white protesters, the Liberty Rides drew international attending. On Female parent'south Twenty-four hours 1961, the motorbus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a flop into it. The Liberty Riders escaped the burning coach, but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the grouping could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Liberty Riders resumed their journey under constabulary escort on May 20. Only the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Chaser General Kennedy responded to the riders—and a telephone call from Martin Luther King Jr.—by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.
On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-simply" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Clan for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought the affair to the U.Due south. Supreme Court, who reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were fatigued to the cause, and the rides connected.
In the autumn of 1961, under pressure level from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals
HISTORY and Google Earth: Follow the Freedom Riders' Journeying Against Segregation During the Civil Rights Era
March on Washington
Arguably i of the nearly famous events of the ceremonious rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. Information technology was organized and attended by ceremonious rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.
More than than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King'south voice communication in which he continually stated, "I accept a dream…"
King'south "I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and liberty.
Civil Rights Deed of 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Human activity of 1964—legislation initiated past President John F. Kennedy before his bump-off—into law on July 2 of that year.
King and other ceremonious rights activists witnessed the signing. The constabulary guaranteed equal employment for all, express the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.
READ MORE: 8 Steps That Paved the Mode to the Ceremonious Rights Act of 1964
Bloody Lord's day
On March 7, 1965, the ceremonious rights movement in Alabama took an peculiarly violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.
As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama country and local police sent by Alabama governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand up downward, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by law and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.
The entire incident was televised and became known equally "Bloody Sun." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.
Voting Rights Human action of 1965
When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into police force on Baronial 6, 1965, he took the Ceremonious Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.
Information technology also immune the attorney general to competition state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia Land Board of Elections in 1966.
Role of the Human activity was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Department four(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.
Ceremonious Rights Leaders Assassinated
The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for 2 of its leaders in the late 1960s. On Feb 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.
On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting fifty-fifty more pressure on the Johnson administration to push button through boosted civil rights laws.
READ More: Why People Rioted Afterward Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination
Off-white Housing Human action of 1968
The Off-white Housing Deed became law on April 11, 1968, only days after King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and organized religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the ceremonious rights era.
The ceremonious rights move was an empowering withal precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of ceremonious rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to terminate segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.
READ MORE:
Civil Rights Movement Timeline
Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement
ten Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr.
Sources
A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Ceremonious Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Certificate for June 25th: Executive Guild 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Manufacture. National Archives.
Greensboro Luncheon Counter Sit-in. African American Odyssey.
Little Stone School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Educational activity Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday March seven, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Civil Rights Motion (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock 9. National Park Service U.S. Section of the Interior: Little Rock Central Loftier School National Historic Site.
Turning Indicate: World State of war II. Virginia Historical Society.
Photo Galleries
Martin Luther King Jr. Photographed past Friend, Flip Schulke
America in Mourning After MLK'south Shocking Assassination
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
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