Martin Luther King And Civil Rights Analysis

Prior to 1865, African Americans lived a devastating and torturous life, where they were seen as inferior to White Americans. They lived at the mercy of white people, were kept as slaves and endured long hours of hard labour, where they were often beaten. After the Civil war, when the 13th amendment granted African Americans freedom from slavery, they were still deprived of their freedom due to restricted rights. They were separated in restaurants, schools, transport systems and public restrooms. Many laws were created which prevented African Americans from having equality among white people. These problematic ways of life caused the black community and those who supported this mistreatment among them, to protest. Through various actions and events,
He used non-violent approaches to put forward his ideas in changing the rights for all African Americans, as there was still struggle for equality. On 28th August 1963, during a march from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial, where many fought for jobs and freedom, Martin Luther King delivered a public speech, “I have a Dream”. It was addressed to 250,000 civil rights supporters, in the hope of ending complete racism in the whole of the United States and to create a law against discrimination. It was exceedingly successful, and is still known today as one of the most famous speeches of the 20th Century (Younge, 2013) as it resulted in the government changing the law and putting forward the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Field, 1995)

However, many African Americans opposed Martin Luther King’s non-violent ideas and behaviour, causing much chaos. They attempted to seek equality through aggressive means (Field, 1995). Although Martin Luther King was instrumental to the formal end to segregation, these minority African American groups, not in harmony of non-violent protests, made it harder to bring a conclusion to