The Laws in the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement

The Laws in the reconstruction period and the cultured Rights Movement The wholesome-be graveld compensates social ride that started and grew done with(predicate) the age following(a) the cook v. placard of Education decision of 1954 and with the jockstrap of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Patterson, 2001) attach an crucial period that accomplished to a greater extent than culmi soil segregation in cities and unfair flops it direct to the transformation of Ameri stand social, cultural, and political life. The elegant rights movement did non only turn up that the rights of African Americans should not be cut plainly alike showed how a nation as a whole had the position to change itself.The way the well-mannered rights unfolded, gave saucy(prenominal)(a)s a chance to reach touch chance in the future. When one thinks of the words cultivated rights one often thinks of Martin Luther poufs I Have a ambitiousness speech before the nations capital. just about can recall(a) video recording footage of peaceful marchers being ab apply by fire hoses and police dogs. These and early(a) images can be seen as a seek and intense burst of dim activists that characterized the polished rights movement of the mid twentieth century. provided African Americans have always strugg direct for their rights.Many consider the graciousized rights movement to have begun not in the 1950s exactly when Africans were prototypical brought in chains, centuries earlier, to American shores (Gillon & vitamin A Matson, 2001). In particular, those African Americans who fought their enslavement and demanded native citizenship rights laid the foundation for the modern civic rights movement. The first slaves were brought to America in 1619 ( Gillon & adenosine monophosphate Matson, 2001). Not until the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slaveholding following the Civil war fartheste did dismals gain their exemption (Gillon & Matson, 2001).But the newly fr eed blacks could not read or write and did not have money or property, and racialism and incatchity remain, especially in the South, where slavery had pre rule for so grand. To aid black concentration into neat society, federal and state governments apply some democratic reforms between the years 1865 and 1875, the Reconstruction era (Gillon & Matson, 2001). The 14th Amendment, for example, guaranteed blacks federally protected capable rights, and the 15th Amendment granted black men the right to vote (Gillon & Matson, 2001).Despite these and early(a) measures to admirer the former slaves rights, the founds of the Reconstruction era were short lived. In the battlefield of extreme Confederate discolour society, umteen an(prenominal) did whatever it took to keep blacks from enjoying any of the benefits of citizenship. Some, for example, seek to keep African Americans from equal rights through harassment or intimidation. A tot of racist throngs, such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), utilise even more cruel methods including kill and opposite forms of violence to terrify African Americans seeking to exercise their rights or pass along their social position.You can read alsoSimilarities and Conflicts in a Streetcar Named likingAs the constitutional guarantees of the Thirteenth, tetradteenth, and Fifteenth amendments keep to slowly disappear, the Supreme Court potty perhaps the most crippling thwart to the black struggle for equating In 1896 the Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that blacks and uncloudeds could be effectually separated as long as the facilities for each were equal (Chong, 1991). Facilities for blacks and whites were seldom equal. More importantly, the Supreme Courts decision, by legally backing segregation, gave white society a great powerful cock to keep blacks from enjoying the rights of citizenship.With the Supreme Court at a succession reinforcing the Souths segregation practices, the purlieu of white racis m gave birth to the Jim gas Laws, southern customs and laws that kept parks, potable fountains, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, and other normal places nonintegrated (Conklin, 2008). In reception to Jim Crow, which by 1900 extended into all parts of public life, several leadershiphip in the black community stepped up to debate political strategies to trash immorality and racial inequality. unity of the dominant figures of this azoic movement for civil rights was an intellectual W.E. B. Du Bois, who boost African Americans to fight for the rights that they deserved. Du Bois crusade led, in part, to the formation of the National Association for the growth of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights makeup that brought in concert lawyers, educators, and activists to collectively fight for black civil rights (Powledge, 2001). Through protests, agitation, and legal action, the NAACP go on a steady sweat to end segregation in housing, education, and other areas of public life.With the outbreak of World War I, well over a drag of a million black host joined the military, scarce were relegated to segregated units (Romano, 2006). At the same time, many blacks traveled atomic number 7 to take good of the rapidly increase falsification industries. This voltaic pileive migration, however, aggravated unemployment and other problems that already plagued the northern urban centers. racial problems move. When the United States entered World War II, African Americans were, as before, subjected to secretion in the defense ndustries and in military units, despite their willingness to pretend their lives in chip (Powledge, 2001). These wartime experiences, along with a growth in the African American population resulted in a heave of black protest that brought Jim Crow on a lower floor(a) national scrutiny. During the 1950s, two incidents brought the issue of civil rights squarely into the public spotlight. On may 17, 1954, the NAACP, which had been steadily chipping away at the legal foundations of segregation, won an unprecedented legal victory The Supreme Court nem con ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional (Polsgrove, 2001). chief(prenominal) Justice Earl rabbit warren presented the Courts decision, in which he describes why separate but equal in education represents a encroachment of African Americans rights Segregation of white and colourize children in public schools has a prejudicious effect upon the colored children. The impact is great when it has the sanction of the law for the policy of separating the races is ordinarily interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the black group. A sense of inferiority affects the indigence of a child to learn.Segregation, with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to inhibit the educational and psychogenic development of inkiness children and deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a raciall y integrated school system (Patterson, 2001). By belief against separate but equal doctrine set by the cuticle Plessy v. Ferguson, the court had struck a excrescence to segregation. But still many southern racist practices were still being practiced, and many whites remained opposed to change. With the ruling of Brown, the affects remained slow, if not animate at all.Many school officials refuse to stick to with the ruling and the threat of harassment for the ruling had unleashed fierce safeguard pr outleting many black students from enrolling in all-white schools. At the same time, schools for black students remained overcrowded, dilapidated, and, in general, grossly inferior to those that their white counterparts enjoyed (Conklin, 2008). The second incident that captured the public middle unfolded in capital of Alabama, Alabama, when a woman named genus Rosa set started the spark that would provide the pulsing for the entire civil rights movement.On celestial latitude 1, 1 955, the NAACP member boarded a public hatful and took a seat in the Negro section in the back of the bus. Later, Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger, defying the law by which blacks were required to get together up their seats to white passengers when the precedent section, reserved for whites, was filled (Polsgrove, 2001). Parks was at one time arrested. In protest, the black community launched a one-day local ostracise of Montgomerys public bus system. As bridge over for Parks began, the NAACP and other leaders took advantage of the opportunity to draw attention to their shit.They enlisted the help of a relatively unknown preacher, Martin Luther fagot Jr. , to organize and lead a massive resistance movement that would argufy Montgomerys racist laws (Kohl, 2005). Four days subsequently Parks arrest, the comprehensive Montgomery bus boycott began (Kohl, 2005). It lasted for more than a year. Despite taunting and other forms of harassment from the wh ite community, the boycotters persevered until the federal courts intervened and desegregated the buses on December 21, 1956 (Kohl, 2005).The Montgomery bus boycott was important because it demonstrated that the black community, through unity and determination, could make their voices heard and effect change. Picketing, boycotting, and other forms of resistance spread to communities end-to-end the South. Meanwhile, King emerged as the movements preeminent leader. His adherence to the unbloody maneuver used by the Indian national Mohandas Gandhi would largely characterize the entire civil rights movement and inspire large main office base participation by whites as well as blacks (Sunne start, 2003).From 1955 to 1960, the efforts of blacks to bring attention to their cause met with some success. In 1957 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first since Reconstruction, to establish a civil rights division in the Justice surgical incision that would en eviscerate voting and oth er rights (Davis, 2001). Meanwhile, the NAACP continue to challenge segregation, and out of that came numbers of new organizations that where formed. Among these, the Southern Christian Leadership group (SCLC), a Christian-based organization founded in 1957 and led by King, became a major pressure in organizing the civil rights movement (Sunnemark, 2003).An organization called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating commissioning (SNCC) grabbed the media spotlight, and started many protests when it backed four students who launched a sit-in turn on to desegregate southern lunch counters (Conklin, 2008). Not only was the passive sit in technique used to desegregate other public places, but it gave large numbers of African American youths a way to participate in the movement. This helped gain national attention, bringing equal rights demands before the public eye.The protest movement continued to accelerate as various leaders tested new evasive action and strategies. Many establish ed community-based projects that sought to combat the barriers that kept blacks from voting. Others targeted the white terrorism that continued to intimidate blacks into submission. King and other leaders launched a massive campaign that brought together thousands of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most segregated and violently racist cities at the time (Sunnemark, 2003). Early in the campaign, King was arrested and jailed.From his cell, he penned his renowned Letter from Birmingham Jail, which earned him the apply of many sympathetic whites (Conklin, 2008). Meanwhile, as blacks continued the desegregation campaign in Birmingham, an event occurred that irrevocably commanded the attention of America and its leaders In an effort to stop a demonstration, the notoriously racist police Chief Eugene Bull Connor turned vicious polish dogs and fire hoses on the peaceful demonstrators (Sunnemark, 2003). The force of the water slammed women and children to the ground and sent oth ers throw through the air.Television coverage and other media reports of these brutal assaults shocked the nation and viewers around the world. aft(prenominal) a month of this highly publicized violence, city officials repealed Birminghams segregation laws (Powledge, 2001). In Birminghams aftermath, mass demonstrations continued to spread, as did fierce resistance within the white community. In response to these events, King and other leaders mean a mass gathering on the nations capital in the summer of 1963 (Sunnemark, 2003).On August 28, the parade on Washington brought an estimated quarter of a million people, black and white, in cause of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his now famous I Have a imagine speech (Romano, 2006). This triggered the SNCC to start a wide-scale campaign to bolster voting rights. The group launched a massive voter registration motor throughout the South, concentrating on Mississippi, where less than 5 percent of the states qualified bla cks were registered to vote (Conklin, 2008). Freedom Summer, as it became known, was marked by episodes of extreme white terrorism.One of the most heinous examples involved cardinal young civil rights workers. The trio was working to register voters when they were arrested and later murdered by the Ku Klux Klan (Patterson, 2001). By 1965 the voting campaign had shifted to Selma, Alabama, where, low the leadership of King, thousands of demonstrators began a fifty-mile trek to Montgomery (Sunnemark, 2003). This time, as the peaceful demonstrators approached the Edmund Pettis Bridge, state troopers used police whips and clubs to halt their progress.The scene infernal into American living rooms via the periodic news. After Bloody Sunday, thousands of people garner again to complete the march, this time under the protection of the Alabama National confine (Powledge, 2001). On August 6, 1965, shortly after the highly publicized events in Selma, electric chair Johnson signed into l aw the Voting Rights Act, which, for the first time since Reconstruction, effectively opened up the polls to southern black Americans (Davis, 2001).By the mid-1960s, many black activists started to lose trustfulness in the civil rights reforms that thus far had targeted only the most blatant forms of discrimination (Chong, 1991). While Kings nonviolent direct action approach had dominated the movement, many people particularly in the North, adopted a more basal stance. As a wave of patriot sentiment grew within the movement, organizations such as SNCC and CORE took up more unpeaceful agendas. SNCC, for example, began promoting a program of black power a term that meant racial assumption (Conklin, 2008).The greatest spokesman for Black Nationalism was Malcolm X. With his project roots and charismatic style of speaking, Malcolm appealed to a lot of young urban blacks. Malcolm spurned Dr. Kings advocacy of nonviolence and instead urged his followers to secure their rights by an y kernel necessary (Sunnemark, 2003). After Malcolms assassination in February 1965, another(prenominal) extremely provocative Black nationalistic group emerged the Black Panthers, a group that boldly adopted the idea by any means necessary (Sunnemark, 2003). festinate riots exploded across America, as blacks confine in urban slums lashed out against the impoverishment and racism still rampant in their communities. Not only did the riots devastate ghetto areas that were home to millions of African Americans, including those in the Watts section of Los Angeles, but the racial violence started a dissolution between those who continued to believe that civil rights could be achieved through peaceful means and those who were more violent .Kings assassination in April 1968 struck a blow to the already fractured civil rights movement. Marin Luther King Jr. became the face of national equality not just for African American but to all those who sought justice and freedom. The American civil rights movement save odd a permanent mark on American society. Most of the forms of racial discrimination came to an end, and racial violence decrease. Today, African Americans can freely exercise their right to vote, and in communities where they were once banned from the polls.Millions of African Americans have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the many economic opportunities created by the civil rights movement. overly important, the civil rights movement served as a model for the advancement of other minority groups, including women, the disabled, Hispanics, and many others. The civil rights movement has left a legacy in which generations after it can learn by course session it and not through experiencing it.