1960's: The Civil Rights Movement

Manish LalCul402SYA
What comes in our mind, when we hear the word 1960’s? The war, social and cultural changes,fight for human rights, and what’s not. It was a span of time which brought extraordinarychanges in world. Although each and every decade bring some changes with it but this decadehad some major changes which changed the world forever and left its footprints in history. Inother words it shaped the world which we know today. It changed the world dramatically, itchanged people’s attitude, lifestyle, fashion, vision and it also affected the world economicallyand politically. 1960’s had both positive and negative effects on our world. On one side, humangot tremendous breakthroughs. Yuri Gagrin becomes the first person in space followed
Although this decade was fully crammed withevents. Civil rights, Vietnam War, Counterculture were biggest events of the decade whichchanged the world totally and still impacting the world. IN this essay, I will focus my attentionon the civil rights because I believe that nothing, not even the wars leaves that deep scars andtraces on the human history as the civil rights. Civil rights movement was one of the mostprofound watershed event in history. It’s the most significant and important for the equality ofAfrican American people. Since 1863, after abolition of slavery there had been a continuousconflict between races of people in USA. Black people were not getting their rights and equality.Civil rights is a term which is broader than political rights, freedom for equality and freedom tospeech. The movement was started with the incident of Rosa Parks refused to surrender herbus seat to a white passenger. Later on, this movement was joined by many studentorganizations and some other group like Black Muslims and Black Panther.For all its unity of purpose, there were many quarters in the civil rights movement and everysingle division did their work. One of the starkest division played out in
Music played a critical role in inspiring and giving the voice to the civilrights movement.‘The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle,’’ saidMartin Luther King, Jr., during the Albany Movement. James Brown became a symbol ofaffirmation and self-respect. His song "say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud". Like a magicalportion, with catchy words and infectious rhythm, won millions of hearts and restored theirhopes. This song restored the hope of millions people to see their dreams as well as convincingthem to fight against the inequality, injustice. He said "Brothers we can’t quit until we get ourshare". In this song he encouraged them, and show them their rights are at the same as one ofanimal and they are viewed as birds and bees: they are working hard like a bee who collects thehoney all day. And in the end, someone else takes the honey. The lyrics of the song demand fora big change and as the song title says that say it loud I am a black and am proud to say it.According to the magazines this song for six weeks was number one on R&B singles chart plusgot in the first ten on the Billboard Hot 100, and become a symbol of the ideology BlackPower.Peter Seeger was another singer in 60’s who encouraged the black people with his freedomsongs. It is a well-known fact that black people were badly discriminated and they were forcedto sit on the back of the bus” from album ‘For Kids And Just Plain Focks’ were isolated from thewhite