The Civil Rights Movement: An African Perspective
By the middle of the 20th century, African Americans were beginning to act to reduce and eliminate the discrimination they had suffered since the end of the Civil War.
• With Jim Crow laws and lynching being a persistent problem in the southeastern States, while slums and barely masked racism were common in the Northeastern States, it became clear the fight for equality had to be waged on a mush stronger presence.
The Civil Rights Movement
• From this understanding, began the Civil Rights Movement.
• Owing to the ideas and works of people like Booker T Washington, Washington Carver, and W.E. Dubois, a growing number of leaders rose to help push the plight of African Americans to the forefront of public consciousness.
• The fight for integration in the school system began in the middle of the 1930s and was pressed by the NAACP.
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
• The NAACP pushed for dull integration to ensure that African Americans could have the same opportunities and education as other Americans.
• The NAACP argued that segregation created and inherent inequality that would persist as long as schools remained segregated.
• The chief counsel for the NAACP during the case was Thurgood Marshall, who later become the first African American members of the Supreme Court.
• Marshall argued that African American students were given less protection under law.
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
• The Supreme Court released guidelines on how to implement integration a year after the landmark decision.
• This ruling was met with extreme resistance in the Southern States that had fought so hard to maintain slavery.
• However, they were fighting on the wrong side of history and were eventually forced to integrate all their schools.
Rise and Strength of Civil Disobedience
• The verdict in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka Kansas was the beginning of the movement.
• For the first time since the Civil War had ended, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that segregation created and inherent inequality.
• Having won a victory through the courts, several African American leaders began to rise to the forefront of the movement.
Rise and Strength of Civil Disobedience
• With the courts showing their awareness to the inequality, civil disobedience gained in popularity.
• Some of the most iconic pictures in U.S. history came from this period.
• African American were standing together against the police, politicians, and the military.
Rise and Strength of Civil Disobedience
• African Americans stood in peace or boycotted in peace and do not fight back even when their adversaries turned violent.
• The movement began following the Supreme Court’s decision on 1954 and lasted through the end of the 1960s.
March on Washington
• One of the most memorable and larges events of the Civil Rights Movement occurred on August 28, 1963.
• Over 250,000 demonstrators descended on the Washington Memorial in Washington, D.C., in what is now known as the March on Washington for jobs and Freedom.
• The idea for such a large demonstration began with A. Philip Randolph near the end of 1962.
• Randolph wanted to bring all the civil rights leaders together to work toward both social and economic equality.
March on Washington
•As one of the primary leaders, Randolph would need to persuade five other to join him:
•Roy Wilkins of the NAACP,
•Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,
•Whitney Young Jr.,
• James Farmer, and
• John Lewis.
March on Washington
• The march began at the National Mall.
• The participants followed a set route, ending at the Lincoln Memorial.
• At the memorial, the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement spoke, with one of the most famous speeches in American history ever delivered under the eyes of the Lincoln Memorial:
• Martin Luther Kings’ “I Have a Dream” speech.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
•The peaceful demonstration in the nation’s capital saw results the next year in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• (The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin).
Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Congress reacted to the obvious display of racism and discrimination that violates the right of African Americans in the Southern States with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• The successful march from Selma to Birmingham occurred in March 1965.
• By the beginning of August of the same year, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act not law.
• The act reiterated what should have been guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, specifying that it was illegal to, in any way, hinder rights of citizens to register to vote, or deny them the right to vote.
The Courage of Rosa Parks
• Rosa Louise McCauley was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, she attended school throughout much of her childhood.
• On 1st December 1955, Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama.
• After paying for the ride, she moved toward the back of the bus and sat in the front of the section marked for African Americans.
• As the bus moved through the city, the white section filled up quickly.
• Bus drivers had the right to assign seats, but they were not allowed to force passengers to stand so that others could sit if there were no other seats available.
The Courage of Rosa Parks
• The bus driver James F. Blake, moved the African American designation sign and said that the seats were now to be given to the white men.
• When Rosa Park refused to move to accommodate the driver’s new designation, he called the police who then arrested Rosa Parks.
• Three day after Parks’ arrest, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was announced.
• One of the organizers of this boycott was Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Dream of Martin Luther King
• Born I 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, he was the child of a minister, which helped shape the person he would become as an adult.
• Though he was dedicated to nonviolence, those fought against were not averse it.
• On 3rd April 1968, he gave his last speech, known as his “I have been to the Mountaintop” speech, to a crowd in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Dream of Martin Luther King
• He told them I have seen the promised land.
• I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”
• The next day he was assassinated by James Earl Ray.
• Today, King is the only American not a President to have a federal holiday in his honor.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Malcolm X was unlike any of the other figures in the Civil Rights Movement.
• While many of the leaders came from the Deep South, Malcolm Little was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in May of 1925, as one of eight children.
• Like King, he was the son of an outspoken minister.
• Unlike King’s father, Little’s father was a supporter of the teaching of Marcus Garvey.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• This unpopular stance with segregationists and white supremacists led to frequent threats to the Little family, resulting in them moving twice before the young Civil Rights leader was four years old.
• Despite trying to escape the threats, the family’s home in Lansing, Michigan was burned down in 1929.
• Earl Little, Malcolm Little’s father, was found dead in 1931.
• Both the arson and murder accounts were ignored, with the law enforcement officials calling both tragedies accidents.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Because of the incidents, Louise Little, Malcolm Little’s mother, suffered mental trauma.
• A few years after the death of her husband, she was committed to a mental institution.
• Her children were sent to relatives and orphanages.
• Having spent most of his early life surrounded by misfortune because of his family’s skin color and belief, Malcolm was less willing to negotiate with the terrorists who had destroyed his family.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• By 1946, Little was living in Boston, where he and a friend were arrested on burglary charged.
• He would serve seven of the ten years he was sentenced to.
• During this time, Malcolm began to reflect on his life and decided to further his education.
• Inspired by his brother, Reginal, he converted to being a Muslim.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• He joined the Nation of Islam, and studied under Elijah Muhammed.
• Muhammed taught the Caucasians worked to keep African Americans in a state of inequality.
• Because of his father believed in the teaching of Garvey, Malcolm would come to believe that African Americans would need to find their own way in a place away from the white people who oppressed him.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• By the time he was released from prison in 1952, Malcolm had changed his surname to the one by which he is known today – Malcolm X.
• He said that little was the name that was given to his family while they were in slavery, and he would not continue to use it.
• Since there was no record of what his family’s name was originally, he chose X to show that his history was lost because of the oppression of the U.S.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Malcolm X was a gifted, intelligent, and charismatic figure.
• He denied the teachings of Christians who had used their religion to justify, first slavery, and then the treatment of African Americans as lesser citizens.
• As a result, Malcolm X was tasked with helping to establish mosques around the country, notably in Detroit and Harlem.
• His appeal attracted a far greater number of people than anticipated.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Because of the he articulated the beliefs of his religion and the potential for the future, the members of the Nation of Islam grew from 500 to more than 30,000 between 1952 and 1963.
• However, his words and actions were not part of the civil disobedience carried out by so many others during the Civil Rights Movement.
• In 1959, he appeared on a TV show titled The Hate That Hate Produced.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Once it was over, X had not only become the face of the Islamic African American Movement, had had come to the attention of the federal government.
• The FBI began to track and monitor him, from a distance at first, then infiltrating his inner circle.
• FBI bugged the locations where he was and conducted wiretaps on X.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Being disappointed by his mentor committing adultery, Malcolm X founded his own organization in 1964, the Muslim Mosque, Inc. and took a pilgrimage to Mecca.
• On his travels abroad, he found the thing he had believed for so long could be overcome that integration was possible when people’s hearts and minds were touched.
• This was a result of his positive encounters with “blond-haired, blue-eyed men I could call my brothers,” according to X.
The Trials and Change of Heart of Malcolm X
• Upon his return, his message was to the American people, not just African American.
• Malcolm X’s home was firebombed in 1965. The following week, three assassins shot him 15 times onstage at the Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom.
• He died before reaching the hospital.
• More than 1,000 people attended his funeral. The following year, the three assassins faced charges of first-degree murder and were found guilty.
The Calm Dignity of Dorothy Height
• Although Rosa Parks is the most famous woman in the Civil Rights Movement, her actions on December 1, 1955, might not have had nearly the impact they had if not for the efforts of Dorothy Height.
• Unlike many of the other Civil Rights leaders who focused on equality for African Americans, Height focused on rights for women.
• Height often worked with Civil Rights leaders to forward the rights of women.
The Calm Dignity of Dorothy Height
• Height was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1912.
• She was still young when her family moved to Pennsylvania where she went to an integrated school.
• Later she was accepted to New York University and she went on to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degree there.
• After college, she became a social worker until 1937 when she joined the Harlem Yong Women Christian’s Association (YWCA).
The Calm Dignity of Dorothy Height
• While working there, she met Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the founders on the National Council of Negro Women, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
• After the meeting she join the organization NCNW.
• She was instrumental in the integration of the YWCA in 1946 and was one of the people to establish the Center for Racial Justice in 1965.
• She led the Center until 1977.
The Calm Dignity of Dorothy Height
• Height worked with the leader of the Montgomery chapter.
• She began the organization of a boycott against the Montgomery public transportation for illegal and unethical treatment of African Americans.
• From this event, she would become instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, more behind the seen rather than in public.
The Calm Dignity of Dorothy Height
• She was one of the primary organizers of the March on Washington, standing beside King when he gave his infamous speech “I Have a Dream”.
• She was one of the founding members of the National Women’s Political Caucus, even as she continued to lead the YWCA.
• Over the next few decades, almost every American President would recognize her, even Bill Clinton.
• She died on April 20, 2010.
Thurgood Marshall
• Thurgood Marshall was first a defender of equal rights for African Americans.
• Born in 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland.
• He attended Lincoln University, having graduate from Lincoln University with honors, any school would be lucky to have Marshall as a law student.
• However, the University of Maryland Law School declined his application purely based on his race.
Thurgood Marshall
• Howard University accepted him and that was when he began his work toward ensuring civil rights, long before the Civil Rights Movement began.
•
• In 1933, he graduated magna cum laude. He became a legal counsel for the NAACP.
• One of his first cases mirrored his own experience with colleges in the U.S. – Murray vs.
• Pearson focused on the denial of a student base on his race instead of academic qualifications.
• It was one of his first major victories, occurring just three years after he graduated from laws school.
Thurgood Marshall
• Later that year he moved to New York City to work for the NAACP full-time.
• There he became one of the most successful and well-known attorneys.
• In 1940, he spoke in front of the U.S. Supreme Court for Chambers vs. Florida
• Perhaps his biggest case was Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas.
• He helped to win for the NAACP, making him one of the earliest proponents of the Civil Rights Movement.
Thurgood Marshall
• Marshall earned a title in 1961 that had never been held by an African American- as a justice on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, appointed by President John F. Kennedy.
• Four years later he was given an even more prominent position as the U.S. Solicitor general by appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. During his time, he won 14 of his 19 cases.
• In 1967 he was given one of the most prominent positions in the U.S. – he was named a Supreme Court Justice, again earning his appointment through President Johnson.
Thurgood Marshall
• Marshal was a justice of the highest U.S. court for nearly a quarter of a century.
• In 1991, he retired and was replaced by the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas another African American. Marshall died in 1993, just two years after retiring.
• He had one of the longest careers of fighting for equality in U.S. history, and earned his place alongside Rosa Parks, King and others as a primary figure of the Civil Rights Movement.
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
