Personal Narrative: The Fight For Civil Rights In America

The Voting Rights Act was one of the most revolutionary bills ever passed by the congressional legislation in the United States. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill into law on August 6th, 1965, not only as part of politics but also, a depiction of morals. Since 1965, it has protected minority voters at the polls, but it has been fifty years since the Voting Rights Act has been passed and it is still a controversial topic that is constantly debated on today. The voting rights of all minorities throughout the country are once again under attack which impacts one’s ability to exercise his or her constitutional right as a citizen.

During the Civil Rights Movement African American were the ones in risk of being killed. Yes, everybody is in risk of being killed by natural disasters, but not everybody during that time were at endanger of being killed because of their race and beliefs. This is the reasons why we fight for our lives as African Americans because we were and still are discriminated by, disrespected, racially profiled, and killed for no reason on a daily basis. The police couldn’t do anything but stand there, because they couldn’t call anybody on themselves.

Black people worked hard to get the rights that all Americans are supposed to have. The Civil Rights Movement Black people fought these laws from the start. For example, many people refused to use businesses that were unfair to black people. After a little more than a year, bus companies no longer forced black people to sit in the back. To do it, they had to change their rules and serve black people the same way they served white people.

In the year of 1865 many significant events took place. The civil war had just recently ended and the United States was entering a time of reconstruction which brought along many changes for the current and future citizens of the United States. During the year 1865 President Lincoln was assassinated and along with Lincoln the Wade- Davis bill died in his pocket. But what triggered the assassination of President Lincoln is the fact that during this time he wanted to move towards the slaves being treated more equally and eventually being freed into society. This enraged many people because they did not see the African Americans as equal to them.

The framers of the United States wrote the Constitution as an alternative government to the Articles of Confederation. The constitution itself has created a fallacy of a direct democracy. The creation of the electoral college, the implement of suffrage for women and african americans, the election of senators, and the power of the judicial branch are examples of how the framework of the new government did not promote a direct democracy. The constitution does, however, create a representative, or indirect, democracy with the articles that were implemented in the creation of the new government. The Constitution does not stem from a distrust of a democracy, rather a way to supervise a free and direct democracy.

African Americans have been treated unjustly for many years. At some point congress thought it was a time for change. This led to the Civil War, where America fell apart over equal rights for slaves. When North won, the slaves were freed, and Congress made three new amendments to the Constitution. Luckily, for the blacks the 15th Amendment was added to the Constitution.

Suffrage is defined as the right to vote. Ambrose Bierce once said, “Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man 's choice, and is highly prized.” In Ambrose Bierce lifetime, he saw two different amendments passed; the fifteenth, which stated: citizens cannot be denied the right to vote because of race, color , or previous condition of servitude in 1870, and the seventeenth, which allowed for the direct election of senators by the voters instead of their election by state legislatures in 1913, amendments.

Our society has been subject to different forms of injustice for hundreds of years, such as slavery followed by decades segregation and discrimination. Discrimination is a common thread in the United States throughout the years, and even though slavery has ended, discrimination continues today in many forms. People who have felt discriminated against have responded in many ways from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Los Angeles in the 1990s was still a place of segregation that led to discrimination and racial tension. The Los Angeles riots (or the Rodney King riots) in 1992, were another painful but eye opening event in the long fight for justice.

The Civil Rights Movement was "political , legal and social struggle by African Americans to gain full citizenship and achieving racial equality. " Although there is debate , it is generally accepted that the movement began in 1955 with the boycott of a bus Montgomery and ended with the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The movement mobilized activists of all races and creeds throughout the nation, and produced some of the most revered leaders of

Whilst the civil rights movement improved the life of African American’s in many ways, it was not until later that such minorities felt true improvement in their lives. Life during the 1950’s had only improved to a small extent, and despite more opportunities and higher wage earnings, there was only limited progress in solving the problems of segregation: violence continued, new employment opportunities and voting rights were not readily available and whilst there was change in the areas of transport and education, many important areas were still lacking. Many of the problems African American’s faced stemmed from the Jim Crow Laws enacted from 1876-1965, which were passed to separate blacks and whites in as many aspects of life as possible. This act was supposedly aimed at making separate but equal accommodations for both races but in reality these laws created segregated barriers and discrimination, where blacks were often treated as inferiors and put at a disadvantage ultimately making racism and prejudices systemic.