The Civil Right Movement
A brief history
The African American Civil Rights Movement was a long
struggle for liberty and equality. The movement began very early and the
purpose of this movement was for African Americans to gain rights like white
people in United State. The black population were discriminated and segregated
under Jim Crow Laws. There were many leaders who led African Americans, but the
most well known were Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, Educator
Dorothy, and Malcolm X.
The Civil Right Movement was the result of many years of
secret organizations resisting and planning. The Civil Rights Movement did not
come from nothing. It began neither with Rosa Parks’ event, nor by the murder
of Emmett Till, but from many years of suffering through slavery, Ku Klux Klan,
and Jim Crow Laws. The events of Rosa Parks and Emmett Till made the Civil
Right Movement encouraged more African Americans to join the fight for their
rights.
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Rosa
Parks’ Bus
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was returning home on a
public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was asked by the driver to give up
her seat to a white man, but she refused. She was not just
an unknown elderly woman tired after her long
day at work who decided to defy.
When the driver repeated his request she again refused and at
the next bus stop she was arrested by the police ‘’ for violating the municipal
ordinance mandating segregation on publicly owned vehicles’’.
From December
5, 1955, to December 20, 1956 African Americans refused to ride city buses in
Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating in the public buses. More
than 66% of the riders on the bus company came from
black riders. This boycott made an economic impact on the city bus system by decreasing their profits. On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that
any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th
Amendment to United Constitustion.
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The
Murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till
was born in 1941 and grew up in Chicago. After his
graduation from school, he visited his cousin’s family in Mississippi in the
deep South. The visit ended in tragedy. One
day he and his friends bought some candy at Brant’s Grocery and Meat Market. When they left the shop Emmett said to the white shop
assistant, ‘’bye baby.’’ It was done on a
dare. His friends did not believe that Emmett attended school with white people
in the North. Four days later Emmett was kidnapped by two white men who came at
night to his uncle’s house. The next day the men were arrested, but it was too
late. Three days later, Emmett‘s body was found in the River.
At the funeral
Emmett’s mother decided to open the casket so
everyone could see tortured of Emmett’s body. The press published photos of
Emmett’s body which attracted the attention of the country to the continuing
violence occurring in the South.
The events of
Rosa Parks and Emmett Till were isolated events in the South. There were many events which caused African Americans to suffer physically and psychologically. As a result, there were many people who fought for liberty and equality of blacks, but the most
prominent leaders were Martin Luther King and Malcolm Let’s take a
closer look at these two famous leaders.
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