The Civil Rights Movement of 1964 from a Psychological and Sociological Perspective

The African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s focused on attaining the most basic rights for African Americans. This Movement focused on the fundamental issues that for White Americans were a basic right. They were freedom, respect, dignity, and economic and social equality. This was a movement of ordinary people who made the difficult decision to stand up for what they believe in. They did this knowing that there would be a price to pay, whether it be being jailed, assaulted, or in some cases even killed. The sociological and psychological motivation behind this Movement, and what drove ordinary people to stand up for what they believed in, and accomplish extraordinary achievements for African-American Civil Rights is that of strength, and determination to stand up for what is just. From a psychological perspective it is important to understand the period before the Civil Rights movement was born. This struggle had been fought since the post-Civil War years, when African-Americans fought for the emancipation of slavery (Farber, 1994). It then continued on through the first decades of the twentieth century, when the Ku Klux Klan paraded down streets demonstrating that whites were the superior race.
The masses of African-Americans were obeying the social norms that were established even though they were un-just and cruel. They were treated as second-class citizens, and treated with brutality if they stepped out of line. This type of behavior was far more prevalent in the South, as white Northerners began to see that stopping racism and segregation was a matter of un-contested common sense (Farber, 1994). It took the courageousness of NAACP member Rosa Parks in December of 1955 to not give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus which set off a chain of events that generated a momentum the civil rights movement had never before experienced (Congress). This struggle for freedom was far from over. In fact, it had just gotten started.
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