The Washington Post Before Black Lives Matter Black Powerã¢ââ¢s Revolutionary Art
The civil rights motility was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the Usa. The Civil War had officially abolished slavery, but it didn't end bigotry against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating furnishings of racism, specially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans had had more than enough of prejudice and violence against them. They, forth with many white Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned ii decades.
Watch: The Civil Rights Movement on HISTORY Vault
Jim Crow Laws
During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like 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 Blackness people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Subpoena granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, specially those in the South, were unhappy that people they'd one time enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.
To marginalize Black people, keep them divide from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, "Jim Crow" laws were established in the South beginning in the belatedly 19th century. Blackness people couldn't use the aforementioned public facilities every bit white people, live in many of the aforementioned towns or get to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.
READ More: How Jim Crows Limited African American Progress
Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; nonetheless, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to purchase a business firm or get an pedagogy. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.
Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy 5. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be "separate but equal."
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?
Globe War II and Civil Rights
Prior to World War II, about Black people worked as low-wage farmers, manufactory workers, domestics or servants. Past the early on 1940s, war-related work was booming, only most Black Americans weren't given the better paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.
Afterwards thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, colour or national origin.
Black men and women served heroically in Globe War Ii, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Ground forces Air Corps and earned more than than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning dwelling house. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the state of war to brainstorm with—to defend freedom and commonwealth in the world.
As the Common cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a ceremonious 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 motion.
READ MORE: Why Harry Truman Ended Segregation in the The states Military
Rosa Parks
On December i, 1955, a 42-year-onetime woman named Rosa Parks plant a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama motorbus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the dorsum of the bus, and Parks had complied.
When a white man got on the bus and couldn't find a seat in the white department at the front of the bus, the motorbus commuter instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.
Equally word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement." Black customs leaders formed the Montgomery Comeback Clan (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and heart in the fight for civil rights.
Parks' courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The Montgomery Coach Boycott lasted 381 days. On November fourteen, 1956 the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.
Petty Rock Ix
In 1954, the ceremonious rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brownish five. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Stone, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Blackness loftier schools to attend the formerly segregated school.
On September three, 1957, ix Black students, known as the Footling Rock 9, arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock 9 tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safe when violence ensued.
Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Petty Rock Nine to and from classes at Fundamental High. All the same, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.
Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.
READ More: Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Stone After Brown v. Board
Civil Rights Human activity of 1957
Even though all Americans had gained the correct to vote, many southern states fabricated it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and most impossible to laissez passer.
Wanting to show a commitment to the ceremonious 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 constabulary, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Information technology allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a committee to investigate voter fraud.
Woolworth'southward Lunch Counter
Despite making some gains, Blackness Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February one, 1960, four higher students took a stand up against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth'due south luncheon counter without being served.
Ringlet to Continue
Over the adjacent several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known equally the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd showtime stood their footing.
Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Irenic Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summertime of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power."
READ MORE: How the Greensboro Four Sit-In Sparked a Motion
Freedom Riders
On May 4, 1961, 13 "Liberty Riders"—seven Blackness and half dozen white activists–mounted a Greyhound motorbus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a motorbus tour of the American s to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 conclusion by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.
Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Liberty Rides drew international attention. On Mother's Day 1961, the charabanc reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a flop into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus, simply were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the grouping could non notice a motorbus commuter to take them farther. U.Due south. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (blood brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to observe a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journeying nether police escort on May twenty. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders—and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.—past sending federal marshals to Montgomery.
On May 24, 1961, a grouping of Liberty Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-only" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Clan for the Advocacy of Colored People (NAACP) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, who reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the crusade, and the rides continued.
In the autumn of 1961, under pressure 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 one of the most famous events of the civil rights motion took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther Male monarch Jr.
More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the master purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "I have a dream…"
Male monarch'due south "I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and liberty.
Ceremonious Rights Act of 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Human activity of 1964—legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy earlier his bump-off—into constabulary on July two of that year.
King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, express the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal government to ensure public facilities were integrated.
READ More: 8 Steps That Paved the Way to the Civil Rights Human activity of 1964
Bloody Sun
On March 7, 1965, the civil rights motility in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protestation the killing of Black ceremonious rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officeholder and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.
As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama land and local police sent by Alabama governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed past police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.
The entire incident was televised and became known equally "Bloody Sunday." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, just King pushed for irenic protests and somewhen gained federal protection for another march.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Human action into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Human action of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.
Information technology likewise allowed the attorney general to competition state and local poll taxes. As a effect, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper five. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.
Office of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section iv(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, property that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.
Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated
The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, old Nation of Islam leader and Arrangement of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm Ten 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 balustrade. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting fifty-fifty more pressure level on the Johnson assistants to push through additional civil rights laws.
READ MORE: Why People Rioted Subsequently Martin Luther King Jr.'southward Assassination
Fair Housing Deed of 1968
The Fair Housing Human activity became law on April 11, 1968, only days subsequently King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sexual activity, national origin and organized religion. It was too the concluding legislation enacted during the civil rights era.
The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Blackness Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought near legislation to finish segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.
READ MORE:
Civil Rights Movement Timeline
Six Unsung Heroines of the Ceremonious Rights Motion
10 Things You May Not Know About Martin Luther King Jr.
Sources
A Cursory History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Ceremonious Rights Digital Library.
Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives.
Greensboro Luncheon Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey.
Little Rock School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther Male monarch, Jr. Research and Education Constitute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Enquiry and Education Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Encarmine Sunday March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Ceremonious Rights Motility (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock Ix. National Park Service U.South. Department of the Interior: Niggling Rock Central Loftier School National Celebrated Site.
Turning Point: World State of war 2. Virginia Historical Society.
Photo Galleries
Martin Luther King Jr. Photographed by Friend, Flip Schulke
America in Mourning After MLK's Shocking Assassination
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
Post a Comment for "The Washington Post Before Black Lives Matter Black Powerã¢ââ¢s Revolutionary Art"