Civil Rights Essay

The Civil Rights Movement was a revolution that spanned between the early and mid 1900s. It was a worldwide political movement that was aimed to ensure legal equality for all people through a principle known as equality before the law. This principle made it so that all people were subject to due process (the same laws of justice) no matter whom they were, where they came from, their socio- economic status, their race, etc. To achieve this equality, many forms of civil resistance were necessary. In many cases, armed rebellion and civil disorder (a form of disturbance caused by a group of people) were even necessary. Because of these many initiatives to promote equality for all people, the goals and strategies of the Civil Rights Movement shifted; although equality was not a direct result, improvements in the legal rights of formerly oppressed groups of people were made.
African Americans were a group a people who were mostly affected by this Movement. Similar to several other groups of people, African Americans migrated to America in search of better lives for themselves and their families. But for African Americans, their struggle was distinct because as they were enslaved for so many years. This enslavement led them to struggle to find equality when they moved to America. Even after the many years of slavery, African Americans were not seen as equal. In the 1930s, the beginning years of the Great Depression, America suffered a lot of economic downturn and African Americans were working on plantations in the South. With the economy in such a bad state, many African Americans were left impoverished and without a stable place to live. Living in these conditions is what motivated the migration to the North to seek better opportunities. In the North, many African Americans were able to work low paying jobs with minimum to no benefits and harsh conditions. Even still, the unemployment rate for African Americans in the North was about 50% because many of these low