Civil Rights Movement: Segregation In The United States

In 1950 the United States were still segregated, an unequal society, and half of the African American families lived in poverty. Whites still believed they were content with their social and economic conditions. Little did they know there was a movement in the making, a strategic plan of a nonviolent assaults on segregation. The Montgomery bus boycott was phase one of the civil rights movement. Being familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, she refused to give up her bus seat to a white male. Thus African Americans refused to ride the bus for 381 days until Supreme court ruled segregation of transportation to be unconstitutional. This boycott launched the nonviolent crusade to end segregation, the Civil Rights Movement.
In 1960, Congress of
wanted to move the movement to Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham was the most racist city in the south not to mention their violent history. Protestors clashed alongside King and said people will die, and they did. Nonetheless, King made the decision to send school children to the streets of Birmingham. He grasped the mood of the country was getting to the breaking point on the fight for civil rights. The chief of the Birmingham police unleashed his full force on harassing these young kids. The police hosed them down with water, let police dogs attack them, children were demoralized, and arrested. The events of the Birmingham protest were broadcast, on TV throughout the world. They were repelled and often compared the United States to Nazi Germany. The broadcast forced the Kennedy administration to confront the contradiction between the rhetoric of freedom and the reality of racism. King knew he had to keep the pressure to make things happen, as a result the March on Washington.
March on Washington took place August 28,1963 in front of the Lincoln memorial, a high point in the civil rights movement. Over 250,000 black and white Americans attended the march. The goals of the march were to bring attention to the need for a public work program to reduce unemployment, increase minimum wage, and law barring discrimination in employment. This nonviolent protested reflected the unprecedented degree of black and white cooperation in support of racial and
By the summer of 1967 violence ran rapid and some feared there would be a racial civil war. Prior to the summer of 67, the Black Panther Party immerged in Oakland, California in 1966. Malcolm X was the intellectual father of black power movement. He demanded African Americans must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on themselves rather than working with white people. The Black Panther Party advocated self-defense on the response to police brutality. Unlike King, Malcolm argued the nonviolent tactics weren’t a good option for African Americans. They also would not make alliances with white groups, which was a key plot for the Civil Rights