Approaches To The Civil Rights Movement

Every decision has a corresponding consequence. We were all told this as we grew up, and nowhere is it as prevalent as in civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the “I Have a Dream” speech for black civil rights and now Eve Conant Wrote an article “Uncivil Rights” about the gay civil rights movement. The idea behind these pieces of work is that the choices people make in life affect all of society especially when it comes to civil rights.
Every civil rights problem begins with the victim. In the 60s it was the blacks whose problem was, “…the Negro is still not free.”(King 1) This is 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation where slavery was abolished with the hopes of equality. Yet 100 years later, the major push would be made and desegregation would be crushed. The modern victim is the gays, whose problem is, “We need to create the urgency and critical mass to stop the injustice towards our community.”(Conant 1) This shows how the gays need to find a place of protest and what they are protesting. While the blacks were segregated, the gays are bullied. These actions from all of us create two different types of problems. Once there is a victim you
have to find out a way to protest.
As with any type of movement, both of these movements have two very different approaches.
Th Civil Rights movement of the 60s was outlined with, “…our creative protest…meeting physical force with soul force.” Meaning that they were a group that was led very peacefully but was attacked with police brutality while the modern civil rights movement is made up with groups such as, “…GetEQUAL” This group was formed during a workshop on civil rights. This group is now working to solve the puzzle that is raising awareness and organizing the protest against the civil rights problem that is gay rights. Through these people’s actions, there are different solutions made to each and every problem and there is a way to go and protest for every reason. Once one knows how to protest, one has to form a solution to their
problem.
To be effective when raising a problem to attention, you also need to give a possible solution to this problem. For the 60s civil rights movement, it was, “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence….must not lead us to distrust of all white people…We cannot walk alone.” This solution showed that by them showing unity with those who accepted them they weren’t some sort of animal but rather a group of people who just want to be acknowledged as such. The gays have a very different solution. “…the fight for equal rights remains mostly in the courtrooms and on op-ed pages…” The gay rights movement is a much more technical issue rather than an issue that is “black and white”. Gays have the internet as an aid but also a hurdle while the blacks had TV as both. The gays are fighting a war that will be decided by non-gays ultimately just as the civil rights movement was decided by non-blacks. This is how both movements helped lead to different solutions in their quest for freedom.
The choices people make in life affect all of society especially when it comes to civil rights. To make a civil rights movement solid and to show just how actions do change things is decided by who the victim is, who targets this victim, what they target about them, and how the victim deals with it. These two movements show that all people no matter how different need to show compassion towards one another because there is no need for this to happen in our country but the actions that are taken lead to these types of segregation to happen.