Civil Rights Movement Analysis

Inequality inspires changes in government through social movements; the Civil Rights Movement and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. These movements emerged from changes in the social and political values of the country. The Civil Rights and the Women’s Suffrage Movement were successful due to many factors. Three of them are that protest group features created organization and unity, protest group actions targeted social issues, and the international pressures from war. These factors created mass mobilization and spread the movements across the country. The government’s reaction to sit-ins, picketing, and arresting protesters led to publicity of the movement. These responses then guided the organization’s actions. The Civil Rights and the Women’s
After events like Little Rock Nine and Brown v. Board of Education, the main goals of the Civil Rights Movement were clear. These events created a specific goal of ending segregation in public places which created unity among the people. The NAACP and other groups focused on civil rights and targeting people who could administer change; the President and Congress (Kernell et al. 2014 p. 144). With clear focus, groups organized protests that targeted specific issues and influenced mass mobilization. Many organized groups met in churches, schools, and ghettos because they were already equipped with leaders and organized group of people (Piven and Cloward p 224). People were willing to get involved because the government was finally starting to consider their interests. The prior organization of these people made it easier to spread ideas and gain support for the movement. As a result, the organizers of demonstrations were able to create protests that targeted the specific issues they wanted to change. For example, they planned to target lunch counters because store owners wouldn’t serve African Americans at lunch counters (in class movie). The plans to target a specific issue led to a more successful
Many of the protests were carried by local groups that had already workforce. For example, many sit-ins were successful because they had an organized group: college students who were motivated by activists to bring change (Piven and Cloward p 224). Not only did they have large groups of support but the protesters were resilient and practiced civil disobedience. They wanted to attract attention and create a conflict for the federal government to force them to act. The use of civil disobedience created conflict between the federal and local governments (Piven and Cloward p 223). For example, the freedom rides created some of the worst mob violence. The African Americans would travel on buses and protest bus terminals to end the segregation in transportation. They targeted the bus terminals because they wanted to match the sites of the issue through protest. As a result of the protest mob violence, the federal government faced whether or not to intervene because the activists were not going to resist (Piven and Cloward p 231). The protesters eventually pressured the national government to order desegregation in all types of transportation because they appropriately targeted the issue of segregation in