Cruz Badillo A Better Tomorrow Analysis

A Better Tomorrow

At eighty two years old, Cruz Badillo pauses for a moment scrambling his catalog of memories for the right things to say. He begins with his childhood back home in Mexico, and goes on to explain how he found himself marching barefoot through the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Standing alongside hundreds of minority men, women, and children, Cruz Badillo joined the movement for American civil rights.

It was the nineteen-sixties; he had only been in American for about 10 years and his wife was pregnant with their now second child. The sixties, as he remembers, was not entirely about the counter-culture movement, stopping the Vietnam war, or ending nuclear warfare. The sixties, as he recalls, was a fight for recognition, equality, and civil rights. He marched in the streets to protest the unjust working conditions of migrant workers. He believed the movement was the very best thing he could do with his time and energy. The civil rights movement, in his eyes, was not just a fight for African-American people, it was a crusade for all minorities in the nineteen-sixties, including immigrant farm workers. In his mind, he was giving his family the very best thing any father could give to his children by

The American civil rights movement was a petite war consisting of multiple battles fought between the United States government and its people.

In nineteen-sixty four, the Civil Rights Act was passed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the discrimination of persons based on race/color, sex, religion, or national origin. "It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools." (Civil Rights Act of 1964). Although the government passed the law to end discrimination, discrimination persisted. It continued in the form of immigration status and economic background, rather than the color of a person 's