outline for civil rights movement essay

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 22, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

Civil Rights Leaders At The March On WashingtonCivil rights Leaders hold hands as they lead a crowd of hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Washington DC, August 28, 1963. Those in attendance include (front row): James Meredith and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 - 1968), left; (L-R) Roy Wilkins (1901 - 1981), light-colored suit, A. Phillip Randolph (1889 - 1979) and Walther Reuther (1907 - 1970). (Photo by Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The civil rights movement 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 United States. The Civil War officially abolished slavery , but it didn’t end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans, along with many other Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades.

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 Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep 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 late 19th century. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. 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 v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be “separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II , most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren’t given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After 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, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World 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. 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 Cold 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.

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn’t find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement.” Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr ., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks’ courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system . The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional. 

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education . In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine , 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 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 Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, 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.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take 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.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as 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 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 movement. It also 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 in which he originated the phrase "Black power.”

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 south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision 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 Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother’s Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group 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 Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. 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.—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-only” facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement 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 King Jr.

More 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’s speech in which he continually stated, “I have a dream…”

King’s “ I Have a Dream” speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 —legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination —into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially 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 state 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 by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as “ Bloody Sunday .” Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions. 

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(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.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 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 even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King’s assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation. Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library. Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives. Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey. Little Rock 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 Education Institute Stanford . Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks. Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org. The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center. The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

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outline for civil rights movement essay

Introductory Essay: Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

outline for civil rights movement essay

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans during the civil rights movement?

  • I can explain the importance of local and federal actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
  • I can compare the goals and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X and Black Nationalism, and Black Power.
  • I can explain challenges African Americans continued to face despite victories for equality and justice during the civil rights movement.

Essential Vocabulary

Continuing the heroic struggle for equality: the civil rights movement.

The struggle to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence a reality for Black Americans reached a climax after World War II. The activists of the civil rights movement directly confronted segregation and demanded equal civil rights at the local level with physical and moral courage and perseverance. They simultaneously pursued a national strategy of systematically filing lawsuits in federal courts, lobbying Congress, and pressuring presidents to change the laws. The civil rights movement encountered significant resistance, however, and suffered violence in the quest for equality.

During the middle of the twentieth century, several Black writers grappled with the central contradictions between the nation’s ideals and its realities, and the place of Black Americans in their country. Richard Wright explored a raw confrontation with racism in Native Son (1940), while Ralph Ellison led readers through a search for identity beyond a racialized category in his novel Invisible Man (1952), as part of the Black quest for identity. The novel also offered hope in the power of the sacred principles of the Founding documents. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun , first performed in 1959, about the dreams deferred for Black Americans and questions about assimilation. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin described Blacks’ estrangement from U.S. society and themselves while caught in a racial nightmare of injustice in The Fire Next Time (1963) and other works.

World War II wrought great changes in U.S. society. Black soldiers fought for a “double V for victory,” hoping to triumph over fascism abroad and racism at home. Many received a hostile reception, such as Medgar Evers who was blocked from voting at gunpoint by five armed whites. Blacks continued the Great Migration to southern and northern cities for wartime industrial work. After the war, in 1947, Jackie Robinson endured racial taunts on the field and segregation off it as he broke the color barrier in professional baseball and began a Hall of Fame career. The following year, President Harry Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and banning discrimination in the civil service. Meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall and his legal team at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meticulously prepared legal challenges to discrimination, continuing a decades-long effort.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits against segregated schools in different states that were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal.” Brown II followed a year after, as the court ordered that the integration of schools should be pursued “with all deliberate speed.” Throughout the South, angry whites responded with a campaign of “massive resistance” and refused to comply with the order, while many parents sent their children to all-white private schools. Middle-class whites who opposed integration joined local chapters of citizens’ councils and used propaganda, economic pressure, and even violence to achieve their ends.

A wave of violence and intimidation followed. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was lynched after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. Though an all-white jury quickly acquitted the two men accused of killing him, Till’s murder was reported nationally and raised awareness of the injustices taking place in Mississippi.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (who was a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Her willingness to confront segregation led to a direct-action movement for equality. The local Women’s Political Council organized the city’s Black residents into a boycott of the bus system, which was then led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. Black churches and ministers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, provided a source of strength. Despite arrests, armed mobs, and church bombings, the boycott lasted until a federal court desegregated the city buses. In the wake of the boycott, the leading ministers formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , which became a key civil rights organization.

outline for civil rights movement essay

Rosa Parks is shown here in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. The Montgomery bus boycott was an important victory in the civil rights movement.

In 1957, nine Black families decided to send their children to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent their entry, and one student, Elizabeth Eckford, faced an angry crowd of whites alone and barely escaped. President Eisenhower was compelled to respond and sent in 1,200 paratroops from the 101st Airborne to protect the Black students. They continued to be harassed, but most finished the school year and integrated the school.

That year, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that created a civil rights division in the Justice Department and provided minimal protections for the right to vote. The bill had been watered down because of an expected filibuster by southern senators, who had recently signed the Southern Manifesto, a document pledging their resistance to Supreme Court decisions such as Brown .

In 1960, four Black college students were refused lunch service at a local Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they spontaneously staged a “sit-in” the following day. Their resistance to the indignities of segregation was copied by thousands of others of young Blacks across the South, launching another wave of direct, nonviolent confrontation with segregation. Ella Baker invited several participants to a Raleigh conference where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and issued a Statement of Purpose. The group represented a more youthful and daring effort that later broke with King and his strategy of nonviolence.

In contrast, Malcolm X became a leading spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) who represented Black separatism as an alternative to integration, which he deemed an unworthy goal. He advocated revolutionary violence as a means of Black self-defense and rejected nonviolence. He later changed his views, breaking with the NOI and embracing a Black nationalism that had more common ground with King’s nonviolent views. Malcolm X had reached out to establish ties with other Black activists before being gunned down by assassins who were members of the NOI later in 1965.

In 1961, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rode segregated buses in order to integrate interstate travel. These Black and white Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, where mobs beat them with bats and pipes in bus stations and firebombed their buses. A cautious Kennedy administration reluctantly intervened to protect the Freedom Riders with federal marshals, who were also victimized by violent white mobs.

outline for civil rights movement essay

Malcolm X was a charismatic speaker and gifted organizer. He argued that Black pride, identity, and independence were more important than integration with whites.

King was moved to act. He confronted segregation with the hope of exposing injustice and brutality against nonviolent protestors and arousing the conscience of the nation to achieve a just rule of law. The first planned civil rights campaign was initiated by SNCC and taken over mid-campaign by King and SCLC. It failed because Albany, Georgia’s Police Chief Laurie Pritchett studied King’s tactics and responded to the demonstrations with restraint. In 1963, King shifted the movement to Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed his officers to attack civil rights protestors with fire hoses and police dogs. Authorities arrested thousands, including many young people who joined the marches. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after his own arrest and provided the moral justification for the movement to break unjust laws. National and international audiences were shocked by the violent images shown in newspapers and on the television news. President Kennedy addressed the nation and asked, “whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . [If a Black person]cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” The president then submitted a civil rights bill to Congress.

In late August 1963, more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in solidarity for equal rights. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He stated, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pushed his agenda through Congress. In the early summer of 1964, a 3-month filibuster by southern senators was finally defeated, and both houses passed the historical civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, banning segregation in public accommodations.

Activists in the civil rights movement then focused on campaigns for the right to vote. During the summer of 1964, several civil rights organizations combined their efforts during the “ Freedom Summer ” to register Blacks to vote with the help of young white college students. They endured terror and intimidation as dozens of churches and homes were burned and workers were killed, including an incident in which Black advocate James Chaney and two white students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi.

outline for civil rights movement essay

In August 1963, peaceful protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to draw attention to the inequalities and indignities African Americans suffered 100 years after emancipation. Leaders of the march are shown in the image on the bottom, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the center.

That summer, Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as civil rights delegates to replace the rival white delegation opposed to civil rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer was a veteran of attempts to register other Blacks to vote and endured severe beatings for her efforts. A proposed compromise of giving two seats to the MFDP satisfied neither those delegates nor the white delegation, which walked out. Cracks were opening up in the Democratic electoral coalition over civil rights, especially in the South.

outline for civil rights movement essay

Fannie Lou Hamer testified about the violence she and others endured when trying to register to vote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the realities of continued violence against Blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC joined forces to register voters in Selma and draw attention to the fight for Black suffrage. On March 7, marchers planned to walk peacefully from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. However, mounted state troopers and police blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then rampaged through the marchers, indiscriminately beating them. SNCC leader John Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and 5 women were clubbed unconscious. Seventy people were hospitalized for injuries during “Bloody Sunday.” The scenes again shocked television viewers and newspaper readers.

outline for civil rights movement essay

The images of state troopers, local police, and local people brutally attacking peaceful protestors on “Bloody Sunday” shocked people across the country and world. Two weeks later, protestors of all ages and races continued the protest. By the time they reached the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, their ranks had swelled to about 25,000 people.

Two days later, King led a symbolic march to the bridge but then turned around. Many younger and more militant activists were alienated and felt that King had sold out to white authorities. The tension revealed the widening division between older civil rights advocates and those younger, more radical supporters who were frustrated at the slow pace of change and the routine violence inflicted upon peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, starting on March 21, with the help of a federal judge who refused Governor George Wallace’s request to ban the march, Blacks triumphantly walked to Montgomery. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act protecting the rights to register and vote after a Senate filibuster ended and the bill passed Congress.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act did not alter the fact that most Black Americans still suffered racism, were denied equal economic opportunities, and lived in segregated neighborhoods. While King and other leaders did seek to raise their issues among northerners, frustrations often boiled over into urban riots during the mid-1960s. Police brutality and other racial incidents often triggered days of violence in which hundreds were injured or killed. There were mass arrests and widespread property damage from arson and looting in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. A presidential National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report, which analyzed the causes of urban unrest, noting the impact of racism on the inequalities and injustices suffered by Black Americans.

Frustration among young Black Americans led to the rise of a more militant strain of advocacy. In 1966, activist James Meredith was on a solo march in Mississippi to raise awareness about Black voter registration when he was shot and wounded. Though Meredith recovered, this event typified the violence that led some young Black Americans to espouse a more military strain of advocacy. On June 16, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and members of the Black Panther Party continued Meredith’s march while he recovered from his wounds, chanting, “We want Black Power .” Black Power leaders and members of the Black Panther Party offered a different vision for equality and justice. They advocated self-reliance and self-empowerment, a celebration of Black culture, and armed self-defense. They used aggressive rhetoric to project a more radical strategy for racial progress, including sympathy for revolutionary socialism and rejection of capitalism. While its legacy is debated, the Black Power movement raised many important questions about the place of Black Americans in the United States, beyond the civil rights movement.

After World War II, Black Americans confronted the iniquities and indignities of segregation to end almost a century of Jim Crow. Undeterred, they turned the public’s eyes to the injustice they faced and called on the country to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and to continue the fight against inequality and discrimination.

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  • How was the quest for civil rights a combination of federal and local actions?
  • What were the goals and methods of different activists and groups of the civil rights movement? Complete the table below to reference throughout your analysis of the primary source documents.

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  • Civil Rights Movement

Essays on Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement essay writing will help you get to know this subject that is of utmost relevance today. Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a massive social movement of African American citizens of the United States and their supporters against racial discrimination and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. Civil Rights Movement essays usually cover it in great detail. At that time a young African American priest and human rights activist Martin Luther King started to take action in protest for the civil rights of African Americans through sit-ins, freedom rides, marches, and demonstrations. Many essays on Civil Rights Movement were composed of this extraordinary man. Our Civil Rights Movement essay samples will reveal even more information on this movement – check samples of essays below to improve your essay.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is one of the renowned activists in the United States and a Baptist minister, who was engaged in various civil right movements to find for the rights of humanity. King Jr. struggled to ensure that equality is restored in the country and that the human rights...

Words: 2554

Historians may argue that there exists perhaps a no better case of contrasting ideologies that parallels the respective philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X that guided their cause for equality in a multiracial America. Luther is renowned for a pacifist approach which I Have a Dream...

Thomas Jefferson s Views on Slavery Thomas Jefferson was one leader who fought to end slavery in the early years. In one of his letters, he suggests that that the talents of the Black people are not a guarantee for their rights. He even argues that Sir Isaac Newton was an...

Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) in America is associated with the constant push that is a result of black activism which can also be related to the NFL protests by African American players. The activities of BLM have raised the question of where the tendency stands regarding the understanding of...

Political participation is well-defined as nationals' activities touching political affairs which makes people rise up and fight for a certain aspect of their rights. From the time when the well-known memorial discourse of Pericles, legislators, and intellectuals have stressed the exceptional nature of social equality by stressing the role of...

Words: 4693

Until the ratification of the Fifteen Amendment in 1870, the voting rights for African Americans were not protected by the constitution of the United States. The voting rights that were passed, prohibited the local authorities and the state from utilizing literacy tests, outright intimidation and other techniques of eliminating African...

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This article looks into the implications of the Civil Rights Act that was established in 1994 in promoting equal treatments to all Americans regardless of the gender, sex, color or racial backgrounds. This act shows the history of America as well as the background upon which the constitution is found. ...

Words: 2051

The world is characterized by imbalanced resource endowment and varying racial, cultural, physical and mental definitions of human beings. The inherent differences among individuals, societies and nations across the globe have formed the foundation for the socio-economic and political inequalities. Strategic advantages based on the state of development of a...

Words: 1517

Although the US has had significant progress towards the abolition of racism through its policies and laws, there is an emerging challenge of institutionalized racism, which is a major contemporary social issue in the United States. Themes that will apply to the analysis of the thesis statement America has failed to address...

Black Lives Matter movements (BLM) in America Black Lives Matter movements (BLM) in America is associated with the constant push that is a result of black activism which can also be related to the NFL protests by African American players. The activities of BLM have raised the question of where the...

After decades of segregation and discrimination on the basis of color, sex, race, religion or national origin, the            Civil Rights Act 1964 was enacted with the aim of seizing public segregation and to ban employment discrimination (Loevy, 1).  It was initially proposed by President John Kennedy and it is...

This paper analyses the article "The Case for Reparations" by Nehisi Coates. It argues that injustices such as segregation do not just affect the direct victims but even the generations that come after that. The inequality between the whites and blacks in America is because of years of segregation and...

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Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War Essay

Introduction.

The North and the South had been growing apart for quite some time before the Civil War broke out. The most important reason for the split was slavery. The Northern states did not permit slavery and opposed it in other states. Their view of slavery had been strongly influenced by the Abolitionist Movement, led by Quakers and other religious groups all of whom regarded slavery as unChristian, and by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 best-selling novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin , which described the horrors of slavery.

Many Northerners were outraged by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, which held that slaves were private property and could therefore not become citizens of the United States. Since Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln was regarded as representing the North, his election in November, 1860 caused seven Southern states to secede from the Union. These were joined by four more when the Civil War broke out in April, 1861, joining together to become the Confederate States of America with its own president, Jefferson Davis. The history of the struggle for civil rights for African Americans begins here because without a civil war it is unlikely that the South would ever have accepted the authority of the White House.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 did not actually free any slaves. Slavery was officially abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which was ratified in December, 1865. Legal test cases determined that the Amendment gave slaves their freedom but not full citizenship, and that the Amendment could therefore not be used to enforce equal civil rights (Vorenberg 6). The Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 gave former slaves citizenship and equal protection under the law but that protection, the Supreme Court decided, was limited to rights conferred under federal, not state law, which meant that private individuals and institutions could continue to oppress freed slaves. The Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 guaranteed voting rights to all men (women did not get the vote until 1919).

When federal troops were taken out of the South as part of The Compromise of 1877 the Democratic Party started to take back the power it had lost. The Southern states passed laws requiring all those wishing to vote to first pay a poll tax and pass literacy and comprehension tests which ensured that poor, uneducated “freedmen” would actually be able to vote. In that way Southern politicians got around the Fifteenth Amendment without actually violating it (Vorenberg 85).

Civil rights groups had to take drastic legal action to stop this trend. The Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896 involved Homer Plessy, an “octoroon” who by law was considered black even though he was seven/eights white. His appearance made it easy for him to buy a first-class rail ticket. Once he had taken a seat in the whites-only compartment he let it be known that he was “colored,” and was therefore violating the state’s separate-car law. This was part of a planned act of civil disobedience in which Plessy was to be arrested, charged and tried, and the court case would then be used to challenge the law. Everything went according to plan except that the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, even in public accommodations which were to be “separate but equal” (Klarman 9-10).

Support for the civil rights movement came mostly from whites at this stage, but there was one notable exception. Frederick Douglass was born into slavery but taught himself to read, and proceeded to teach other slaves. The plantation owners disapproved of this practice, fearing that the ability to read would lead to discontentment among their slaves. Douglass escaped in 1838, at age 20, settled in New Bedford, MA, and became an anti-slavery activist, not only in the US but also in Great Britain and Ireland. He advocated equal education for all, desegregated schools, equal rights for African Americans as well as women, and – unlike many Abolitionists of that time – taught that the Constitution was an anti-slavery document. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Douglass fought for equality for his people.

Reconstruction was a stormy period but gradually whites reversed the gains blacks had made. Beginning in 1876, the Southern Democrats passed Jim Crow laws forbidding blacks and whites from using the same facilities. These restrictions, along with modifications of the Reconstruction Amendments, replaced the South’s Black Codes as a means of keeping African Americans powerless and poor. One consequence of the Jim Crow laws was “The Great Migration” during which 1.3 million former slaves moved to Northern cities find work and live in relative freedom.

The period between 1877 and 1954 did not see dramatic improvements in civil rights although the movement was far from inactive. The NAACP was established in 1909, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under A. Philip Randolph became a powerful political force. However, change was slow, partly because of two World Wars and the Great Depression in between.

In 1954 the pace of change suddenly quickened when the case of Brown v. Board of Education was brought before the Supreme Court. By finding for Brown, the Court overturned the “separate but equal” ruling of the Plessy v Ferguson case, stating that segregation laws violated the 14 th Amendment (Wikipedia). There was a good deal of resistance to integration of schools, notably in Little Rock, Arkansas where the National Guard had to be called in to prevent violence, but for the most part the schools had been integrating themselves for some time.

Inspired by their legal victory, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) looked for a suitable person to challenge the legality of segregation in public spaces by means of an act of civil disobedience. When Rosa Parks, on her own initiative, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, she was arrested, charged with violating the segregation code of Montgomery, Alabama, and put in jail. NAACP president E.D. Nixon bailed her out and persuaded the Women’s Political Council (WPC) to distribute 35,000 leaflets asking commuters to boycott the buses (Chappel). This was followed by announcements in the local newspaper and in black churches that Sunday.

After the first day of the boycott, community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), under the young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to lead the boycott, which ended up lasting for 381 days. They also decided to file a law suit to test the legality of the city and state segregation laws, in which they were helped by NAACP counsel, Thurgood Marshall who would later become a Supreme Court justice.

Even though she was a quiet and unassuming woman, Rosa Parks was acutely aware of the injustice of the segregation laws. She had attended the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee some months prior to the bus incident, learning about civil rights reform and non-violent resistance. The school trained many black leaders, and how effective their techniques were was seen in early 1960, when black students used those tactics to protest against segregated public facilities in their city. Neatly dressed, quiet and respectful, they persisted in their non-violent protest until all restaurants were fully integrated.

The Highlander school was suspected of being a Communist front by local segregationists. When the integration of schools in Tennessee commenced “with all deliberate speed” after the Brown decision, 600 National Guardsmen had to be called in to prevent whites from attacking black students entering Clinton High School. The following year, when the first black students graduated from a public high school, Clinton was almost completely destroyed by three bombs. Hattie Cotton Elementary was also bombed. Local segregationists blamed the Highlander Folk School for stirring up trouble, and had it closed down (Anonymous).

Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was the most prominent civil rights organizer in the country. His greatest achievement may be March on Washington, held on August 28, 1963, when about 300,000 marchers assembled in front of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial to hear him give his “I have a dream” speech. The March was televised and had a tremendous impact on all Americans, including President John F. Kennedy. King received the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. King’s method of dealing with social injustice has proved to be far more effective than any other types of protest. By his brilliant use of the media he was able to show the world the effects of racism on American society and to shame political leaders into taking legal action.

When Lyndon B. Johnson took over after Kennedy’s assassination, civil rights leaders feared that this Texan would not be as sympathetic to their cause as Kennedy had been. They were pleasantly surprised when Johnson pushed hard to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through the Congress and Senate. The Act “strengthened voting rights, banned discrimination in public facilities and in employment, empowered the attorney general to begin suits against school segregation, and authorized the withholding of federal funds from noncomplying schools” (Weisbrot 89).

The next step was the National Voting Rights Act but Johnson wanted to give the country a chance to get used to the Civil Rights Act before eliminating the last of the Jim Crow laws. “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama changed his mind. In the aftermath of this widely televised and reported event, Johnson gave an emotional speech before the House of Representatives, finishing by saying : “Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.” (Weisbrot 152). The Act passed 328-74 and the signing was witnessed by Rosa Parks, who had been especially invited for the occasion.

In theory, this Act completed civil rights movement’s quest for equal rights. Since then Barack Obama has been elected president, and two African Americans have served as Secretary of State. As a result, some people have decided that the civil rights struggle is over. However, the story of how an enslaved and persecuted people overcame adversity to reach those heights will serve as an inspiration as well as a warning to future generations, and must therefore never be forgotten.

Works Cited

Anonymous. “ Brown v. Board of Education. ” Wikipedia. 2009. Web.

Anonymous. “1960: The Untold Story of Jackson’s Civil Rights Movement.” The Jackson Sun , 2003. Web.

Chappell, Kevin. “Rosa Parks: The Life and Legacy of ‘The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement’.” Ebony Magazine , 2006.

Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality . New York: Oxford UP, 2004.

Loveland, George W. “A Greater Fairness: May Justus as Popular Educator, Part 2.” Ferrum College, 2006. Web.

Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.

Weisbrot, Robert. Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement . New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

  • The North and South split over the issue of slavery. When Abraham Lincoln was elected president, eleven states formed the Confederacy and with that the Civil War began. This is where the history of civil rights begins.
  • The Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves but the 13 th Amendment did. However, blacks remains second-class citizens. The 14 th Amendment was made ineffective because while it gave African Americans equal protection under the law, that only applied to rights granted by the federal government. Private individuals and institutions could persecute “freedmen” without fear of the law. The 15 th Amendment gave all men the right to vote but the states made sure few blacks actually did vote.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson challenged segregation laws but the Supreme Court decided public facilities must be “separate but equal.” Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, taught himself to read, escaped and became an international civil rights activist.
  • Jim Crow laws kept African Americans poor and powerless. As a result, about 1.3 million moved to the cities in the North to find work and live in relative freedom.
  • Between 1877 and 1954 change came slowly. Brown v. Board of Education changed that. It overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal,” and ordered integration of all public schools.
  • The NAACP took advantage of Rosa Park’s courageous act of defiance by challenging segregation laws. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. lasted 381 days and resulted in the integration of Montgomery.
  • Rosa Parks attended the Highlander Folk School for several months before the bus incident. The school taught civil rights reform through non-violence. It was involved in the lunch counter protests in Nashville, inspired by the success of black students in Greensboro. School integration in Nashville resulted in the bombing of Clinton High School and Hattie Cotton Elementary, but Highlander students were blamed for creating unrest. The school was accused of being a Communist operation, and closed down.
  • Martin Luther King’s greatest achievement may be the March on Washington in August, 1963. He used the media there, and in other demonstrations, to show the world the injustices of racism, and shamed politicians into taking action.
  • Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through in spite of strong resistance in the Congress and Senate. He followed it with the National Voting Rights Act, which finally gave African American equal rights fully supported by the law.
  • Even though an African American now occupies the Oval Office, the struggle against prejudice will never end. Future generations can learn valuable lessons from the civil rights movement.
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IvyPanda. (2021, November 2). Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/civil-rights-movements-brief-history/

"Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War." IvyPanda , 2 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/civil-rights-movements-brief-history/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War'. 2 November.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War." November 2, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/civil-rights-movements-brief-history/.

1. IvyPanda . "Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War." November 2, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/civil-rights-movements-brief-history/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War." November 2, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/civil-rights-movements-brief-history/.

  • Plessy vs. Ferguson and Brown vs. Board of Education
  • Counter argue Plessy v Fergusson
  • Racial Segregation: Plessy v. Ferguson
  • Rosa Parks' Life and Influences
  • Education Precedent-Setting Cases
  • Jim Crow Laws in the Reconstruction Era
  • The Frederick Douglass Historic Site
  • Rosa Parks and Act of Civil Rights Defiance
  • The Separate but Equal Rule
  • Frederick Douglass and His Incredible Life
  • “A Letter From Birmingham Jail” and “I Have A Dream” by M. L. King Jr.
  • Freedom, Equality & Solidarity by Lucy Parsons
  • Samuel Robert Cassius: Restoration Period Leader
  • Canadian Constitution Reform and Charlottetown Accord
  • Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Malcolm X’s Leadership Styles

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History of The Civil Rights Movement in America

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Civil Rights Movement, Outline Example

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May 1954, the Supreme Court in the US rules against unconstitutionality of segregation in public schools

August 1955, an action of white racists in mutilation and murder of Emmett Till, a Black boy aged 14 years in Mississippi

December 1955, arrest of Rosa Parks aged 42 after comfortably taking a seat in bus reserved for the white.

September 1957, some black students in Little Rock, Arkansas attempt to register in Central High School.

1960, Eisenhower develops a lukewarm attitude for civil rights.

February 1960, organized sit-ins and non-violent protests from Greensboro in North Carolina students as a result of services denial in segregated banquet

1962, James Meredith assisted by troops on orders of President Kennedy to join University of Mississippi. Meredith is successful in joining the University after one year of suffering from intimidation and racism.

August 1963, political science degree graduation of James Meredith

May 1961, segregated buses made illegal by the government although inter-state facilities of the buses remained segregated. CORE, Congress of Racial Equality leads a Freedom Rides protest.

May 1963, segregation policies in Birmingham, Alabama city face major protests prompting the use of fire hoses along with dogs by police to counter the peaceful protests and culminating to an arrest of 3, 000 people.

June 1963, civil rights advocated by President Kennedy through the national television asserting that the solution to the problem was not based on legislation in isolation.

August 1963, 250,000 participate in ‘March on Washington to Jobs along with Freedom’.

November 1963, assassination of President Kennedy leading to the appointment of a successor, Lyndon Johnson who promoted Civil Rights bill

July 1964, Civil Rights bill passed making segregation to be illegal with respect to public facilities and ending discrimination based on the race, country of origin, religion and color. This was a positive step to Civil Rights Movement

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Home / Essay Samples / History / Civil Rights Movement / Causes and Effects of the Civil Rights Movement

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