1960s Equality

Equality for every individual is something that we as Americans strive to provide and maintain for the current and future generations. The idea of equality for all has become an integral and necessary part of our American culture. Without equality for all, we cannot function as one nation under one flag. It has become such an important ideal and concept of American culture, that whenever people think of America, they naturally and automatically think of freedom and equality.
In the pursuit of equality and the "American Dream," there have been countless events in this nation's history that have dramatically changed how equality is viewed in this country. The definition of equality for this context can be seen as people of all religions, races
One of these ways was that the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. MLK along with Rosa Parks propelled the issue of equality for all human beings and specifically African Americans to the forefront through their actions, speeches, and marches. MLK’s "I have a Dream" speech in 1963 is considered as the one of the most important if not the most important speech in the civil rights movement. The central theme of the speech dealt with the vision of one man who saw an America in which everyone could get along with each other no matter what their race or skin color was and an America in which the race of an individual was not something that was used against that individual but instead it was respected and was a non-issue. The civil rights movement of 1960s transformed America and American society and culture and how American society viewed the concept of race. The civil rights movement of the 1960s led by MLK laid down the foundations and building blocks of an America in which every man, child, women was equal. An America in which whites, African Americans, and immigrants all had equal rights and opportunities and were not discriminated on the basis of their skin color or ethnicity. But even though the foundations had been laid by these leaders, that did not mean that the road moving forward in America’s journey to a more equal nation would be a peaceful and smooth
These events have also put the spotlight on our collective efforts to continue the vision that the civil rights movement leaders had for America and to take into consideration if we as a nation have taken two steps back and one step forward in the journey for equality for all. A major national event that occurred in 1992 in southern California that shook the whole nation was the beating of Rodney King an African American male by four white police officers. The senseless and ruthless beating by the police officers was caught on camera and made the front pages of newspapers all over the nation and even the world and it once again brought the issue of equal rights and no racial discrimination against the African American community into the spotlight. The beating and the eventual acquittal of the four police officers of any wrongdoing in the beating led to the eruption of race riots in southern California, that had not been seen since the civil rights movement. Jonathan Smith an assistant professor of African American studies at Saint Louis University believes that the Rodney King incident “truly showed to the whole nation that the true extent to which we had come in dealing