A Summary Of The Civil Rights Movement In Birmingham, Alabama

Louisiana is another case that helped establish the theory of the heckler’s veto. This case arises from a group of students from a black college who were protesting a segregated restaurant in 1961. They were arrested, and the following day a local pastor, Elton Cox, gathered around two thousand protesters who went down to the police station where the students were being held. After giving a message, the crowd started singing and the student started singing back to the crowd. The police grew concerned and ordered the crowd to disperse.

Meredith Jr, an African American Air Force veteran, was denied admission to the “Ole Miss” which is the University of Mississippi. He tried registering four times without success. Meredith got legal add from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and fought his case and the Supreme Court found in his favor. Long telephone conversations between the Attorney General, President Kennedy and Governor Ross Barnett failed to produce an answer. When federal marshals convoyed Meredith to campus in another attempt to register for classes, rioting erupted which led to death of two people and injuries to dozens.

African Americans were one of the many groups to have struggled for change and equality. The march on Washington was one of the several battles against racial discrimination to have taken place during these times. Prior to World War II, 75 percent of defense contractors refused to hire African Americans, and another 15 percent employed them only in menial jobs. In response to such discrimination, A. Philip Randolph, president and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, planned a march on Washington where he called on African Americans to come to capital on July 1, 1941. President Roosevelt, in fear the march might provoke white resentment or violence, asked Randolph to back down (Danzer et al.

Sanitation workers, led by garbage-collector-turned-union-organizer, T. O. Jones, and supported by the president of the American Federation of State, County, and

"Bloody Sunday,” occurred when a guy name John Lewis and a lady named Hosea Williams attempted to lead more than 500 civil rights marchers east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They made it only to the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away from where they started, where they met state and local policemen. The police men attacked the blacks with Billy clubs and tear gas. Bloody Sunday took place due to the fact that one protester by the name of Jimmy Lee Jackson was shot down by an Alabama state trooper on February 26, 1965. Bloody Sunday displayed a huge impact in the civil rights movement.

African Americans were treated poorly during the reign of the Jim Crow laws. During this time, race riots were common in cities all over the nation. From direct-action protests and boycotts to armed self-defense, from court cases to popular culture, freedom was in the air in ways that challenged white authority and even contested established black ways of life in moments of crisis ( Baldwin 1).. One race riot occurred in 1865 in Memphis, Tennessee. Mobs of whites and policemen killed forty-six African Americans.

The Birmingham Campaign The Birmingham Campaign was the real beginning of the civil rights movement because? It is regarded as the first large- scale demonstration against segregation in the United States, the Campaign led the United states and Montgomery laws segregating buses to be unconstitutional, and the Birmingham Campaign ended with a victory, local officials agreed to remove “white Only” and “Black Only” signs. Segregation in the mid 1950’s was common and legally enforced throughout the America south. Birmingham, Alabama was a hotspot of black activism in disagreement to segregationist policies.

The 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott, a protest against segregated public facilities in Alabama, was led by Martin Luther King Jr. and lasted for 381 days. The main goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against the blacks , and to also secure legal recognition and federal protection of

They believed everyone had individual rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One incident is D-Day, or the children’s crusade that happened in May of 1963. Students skipped school so they could march in the streets of Birmingham, Alabama. The city did not like this, so firemen brought hoses and started spraying people away. Police used aggressive dogs to keep people in line.

However, his house got bombed and Martin Luther King got arrested of the boycott. At this point, Martin Luther King decided to lead a protest in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Accidentally, the protest ended up being violent. Consequently, Martin Luther King Jr ended up being arrested. Positively, Martin Luther King explained that nonviolence makes a calamity ended up in which that the people must deal with.

(Floyd). “They burned down white own tire company that burned on for days and nights, and all you could see was smoke from it all the way in uptown Miami.” (Floyd). “The actions that the National guard did was arrest the rioters.” (Donnie).

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965” (history.com). Before the act was passed there many protests and marches. Voting rights activists in the South were subjected to many forms of mistreatment and violence. One of the marches Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery, was very brutally and deadly, it was also captured on television. The protesters faced the Alabama state troopers when they arrived, the troopers attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

(Roark, P. 924) What set civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s apart from earlier acts of black protest was its widespread presence in the South, with a large number of people involved, their willingness to confront the white institutions directly and the use of non-violent protests and civil disobedience to bring about change. The arrest of Rosa Parks in December 1955 is probably the most famous example of this. The African Americans boycotted the bus system in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Montgomery bus boycott lasted a full year. (Roark, p. 924) These were good tactics.

One of the main goals of Reconstruction was to require that the South give African-Americans equal rights. With slavery abolished, the Federal Government decided that it was now time to give African-Americans the rights given to the rest of American citizens. This was in the mid 1800s. Needless to say, these plans were not put in place, or at least not properly enforced, for many more years. It took a well-organized uprising by African-Americans about 100 years later to finally make some progress.

In some historical periods when man has been desperate for solutions, men of the cloth have always come up to lead a struggle as important and as moral as any can be. The preacher from Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. was one such person. His leadership and that of other personalities enhanced the very development of the Civil rights movements that challenged one of the greatest obstacles that NAACP faced. This was the segregation laws that continued to deny the black man the benefit of the American dream. However, to Martin Luther King, it was not a question of the blacks alone, but a question of every person who was denied their rightful place in the United States present and history because of the color of their skin.