Confrontational Tactics In The Civil Rights Movement

Violence. Fear. Segregation. These are the things African Americans had to face in the South. African Americans had a hard time in the South between 1955 to 1968. The civil rights movement was a non-violent protest to renew black rights. Great Leaders fought in peace with people without using their fists. History.com states, “Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence.”

America has long been considered “the land of the free”, illustrated in many historic documents from around the time our country was born. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 immediately showed that freedom, as we declared ourselves independent of Britain’s rule. A little over a decade later, in 1787, the Constitution was created, after the failed attempt of the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution initiated the setup of America’s government during the Constitutional Convention, in which George Washington was selected as the first president of the United States. Another four years later, in 1791, the Bill of Rights was adopted as part of the Constitution, giving Americans their basic freedoms that are very much debated about today. In the Bill of Rights, Americans

The civil rights movement was a mass movement for African Americans to gain equal opportunities, basic privileges and rights of a U.S. citizen. Although the beginning of the movement dates back to the 19th century, we saw the biggest changes in the 1950s through 1960s. African American men and women, whites, and minorities, led the movement around the nation. Racial inequality in education, economic opportunity, and legal processes were the most prominent places in need of social reform. Minorities were politically powerless. The movement addressed three areas of discrimination: education, social segregation, and voting rights.

During 1954 to 1968, African Americans and whites alike were fighting for the rights of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. Throughout America, protesters used different tactics to earn their freedom. Some used violence, while others chose a non-violent path. Non-violence overall was more effective than violence during the Civil Rights Movement. Furthermore, bus boycotts are an efficient strategy that was used in the 1950s to 60s.

In the 1900s, as racism had become more and more apparent, leaders started to rise up in attempt to change society’s opinion which led to and increasing amount of people becoming involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Many had conflicting ideas about how to eliminate racism, and as people became bolder with their beliefs, different strategies started to emerge. Two ideas among many were the main tactics used to convince people that segregation should be stopped. These two ideas were sprung from the minds of two different men, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. When equal rights were not established, protests and marches were the major uses of displaying indignation towards racism. This eventually lead to the development of the Civil Rights Movement which began in the 1950s and was an act towards discrimination. Martin Luther King’s ideals were the most reasonable for America in the 1960s because of his method of nonviolence and his belief that people should not be

Society has a set of actions as what they see as “normal” and socially acceptable. They define this set of unspoken rules as social norms. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, a reader will often find many characters breaking the social norms of Maycomb County, Alabama. The defiance of these social norms help the young protagonist, Scout, learn valuable life lessons of equality. When Atticus chose to defend Tom Robinson in court, he violated the social norm of colored people being inferior to whites and became a maverick in Maycomb community. Social norms are again broken when Calpernia decided to take both Jem and Scout to the First Purchase, an African American church.

One of the two most prominent fights for civil rights for specific communities in the 20th century in the United States were the Women's Suffrage Movement and the Civil Rights Movement. The Women’s Suffrage Movement advocated for the right to vote for women living in the United States of America. The Civil Rights movement faced the systematic suppression and oppression of African-Americans and utilized various different techniques of non-violent in order to overcome the system set against them. While there are many similarities and differences of both movements that were instrumental in the correct way to fight oppression, both utilized non-violent intentions and techniques to overcome their obstacles.

The laws of many states decreed that blacks and whites could not use the same public facilities, ride the same buses, attend the same schools, etc. These laws came to be known as Jim Crow laws. Although many people felt that these laws were unjust, it was not until the 1890s that they were directly challenged in court. In 1892, an African-American man named Homer Plessy refused to give up his seat to a white man on a train in New Orleans, as he was required to do by Louisiana state law. For this action he was arrested. Plessy, contending that the Louisiana law separating blacks from whites on trains violated the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, decided to fight his arrest in court. By 1896, his case had made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. By a vote of 8-1, the Supreme Court ruled against Plessy. This case was known as the Plessy vs. Ferguson. Another case that African Americans had to face was called Brown v. Board of Education. Brown v. Board of Education was actually the name given to five separate cases that were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the issue of segregation in public schools. Both blacks and whites had to go to different schools and could never go to the same school and they had to be separated until the event of Little Rock

The film, Eyes on the Prize: Fighting Back, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is put to the test. During the Supreme Court case of Brown Vs The Board of Education, many people fought for schools to end segregation of the students. This means that black and white students would attend the same schools together. The Supreme Court case made its final decision and made it illegal to segregate students. Central High School was the school that let black students in first. The NAACP let in 9 black students at Little Rock and they were called the Little Rock Nine. Even though many people fought to not have them there, President Eisenhower fought to keep them there. This led to an uproar from the community and a lot of violence. At one point the governor even has to call out the national guard and the students had to be escorted to class by police. By the end of the film, only one black student is left to graduate

Thurgood Marshall was instrumental in ending legal segregation and became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. Born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland, Thurgood Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP, he utilized the judiciary to champion parity for African Americans. In 1954, he won the Brown v. Board of Inculcation case, in which the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools. Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1967, and accommodated for 24 years. He died in Maryland on January 24, 1993.

Africans Americans weren’t getting much respect or equality with the whites since 1619, the year when the first African slaves were shipped to Virginia. In 1954, the civil rights movement of African Americans to achieve equal rights such as, housing, jobs and education. Many other events during the civil rights movement timeline, 1954-1968, made the movement stronger. Such as the Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat and got arrested in 1955, which started the Montgomery bus boycott by Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights movement activists used many legal actions such as how segregation ended in public school in Little Rock, Arkansas and how whites were against it, non-violent approaches, like how customers from a sit-in in Wichita, Kansas, started to protest and another one in Montgomery, Alabama, and how some black activists programs used direct actions, to stand out during the movement.

The African American Civil Rights movement existed at large between the early fifties and the late sixties in a society that was constantly on the verge of social destruction. The black rights movement existed politically, socially, and economically everywhere in the United States. As time progressed the movement developed and saw many changes along with schisms separating activists and how they approached getting their rights. In the early fifties there was a large non-violent integration based movement spearheaded by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. However, as the time progressed, the movement started seeing a more aggressive leadership with figures such as Malcolm X, but eventually it turned into an extremist movement

This case took place in Kansas during the 1950s after Plessy’s case was settled. Although the separate but equal act was enforced, schools were still segregated in America. Linda brown and her sister were elementary school students. To get to their bus in the morning, they had to walk through a highly dangerous railroad. Linda was forced to go to a dangerous all-black school that was far from her house rather than a nice white school that was close. Throughout Lindas education, she brought her parents to believe that the segregated schools are a violation to the 14th amendment. The family took their case to court and initially the court believed that segregated schools was harmful for black children, however they were justifying it by saying that since the separate schools had similar buildings, transportation etc. Segregation would continue to be legal in America. Linda and her family were still not satisfied with this result so they took their case to the Supreme Court. According to the Landmark cases, the Supreme Court states, “In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown.  The Court found the practice of segregation unconstitutional and refused to apply its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson to “the field of public education.”  Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion for the Court.” Linda and her family won their case and changed

During the tumultuous period of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, the goal for bettering the lives of African-Americans was desired by many. However, the means of attaining that goal, varied greatly among the representatives of the movement. The African-American civil rights efforts were spearheaded by men of peaceful protest for integration, such as Martin Luther King Jr., and in contrast leaders such as Malcolm X who expressed separatist ideals. Other groups of civil rights advocated took an outright violent approach, such as the Black Panthers.

The American civil rights movement started because the African-American civil rights movement goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against African-Americans and enforce equal voting rights. During the civil right movement the president of the United States was John F. Kennedy. When the civil rights movement was happened, there