The Roles of Malcolm X and Black Panthers in the Civil Rights Movement

After the success with Brown v. Board of Education the segregation battle continued with public transportation. Despite segregated seating on public buses, bus drivers in Montgomery forced African Americans out of their seats for white individuals. If they did not obey the bus driver had the legal right to arrest their orders. Brown v. Board of Education opened doors to challenge the issue of segregation in many other areas as well, such as public transportation. Even though the U.S District Court ruled segregation on public buses as unconstitutional, the city of Montgomery decided to appeal the courts decision to the U.S Supreme Court and continued with public bus segregation.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s was a struggle for African Americans to obtain equal rights and be free of racial discrimination. The use of Jim Crow Laws allowed people, particularly in the South, to continue oppressing African Americans after the Civil War. Confrontational tactics such as protests and sit-ins were important in the Civil Rights Movement, however non-confrontational tactics such as litigation, civil disobedience and economic boycotts were most important as they brought about significant change in opposing segregation. Confrontation is defined as a hostile or argumentative situation between opposing parties.  

Since the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in 1863 there was a perpetual battle for African American equality in the United States that was a key part of our history throughout the twentieth century. Anne Moody’s Coming of in Mississippi is a book that greatly outlines the hardships faced by a black individual during the fight for equality. One main theme covered in the book is whether violent or nonviolent action is more productive in the fight for equality. This argument is one that defined various African American leaders in the mid nineteenth century. Leaders such as Martin Luther King prided themselves on nonviolent protests while others such as Malcolm X argued that violence was needed to truly reach equality.

These ideas would later begin to deteriorate in the black communities due to Jim Crow laws, racial discrimination, and eventually the race riot. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. After the riot in Atlanta, many African American looked to the ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois. Bois, who help find the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, wanted to force equality for African Americans by all ways possible. He believed this would be a faster approach than Washington’s ideas.

From the title, it creates in idea of social change in my mind, especially from the picture on the book cover. Flannery O’Connor place a social conflict of racism even after transformed the South. She creates Julian’s character and his racist mother that wish to make things back to the slavery edge. She intimidates every black person get into the bus and I assume if she has the power to make them not ride the bus, she will do. However, she keeps bother and laugh on black people, which make Julian (her son’s) upset.

Several thousand who were aliens were deported. The largest raids occurred on January 2, 1920 when over 4000 suspected radicals were seized nationwide. Over 800 were arrested in New England from locations that included Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Fitchburg, Lawrence, and Lynn.” (www.mass.gov). The bombings only confirmed what the Americans had feared.

College of Charleston Bruce Watson, author of Freedom Summer, writes about the struggles of the civil rights movement in Mississippi during the 1960’s. The volunteers as well as the African Americans in this book are trying to break the white supremacist society by: holding a voter registration drive, hosting sit-ins, and helping to set up Freedom Schools. Organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) were created to help African American’s receive equality in: education, politics, and society. Freedom Summer reflects what I am learning in Women’s and Gender Studies because it addresses the topic of rape and privilege. When the Klansman created the Birth of a Nation film they made it in favor of white women.

For decades many civil rights leaders and activists fought for rights and equality. None of this was even taken into consideration until King came into play in the 1950s (Fighting For Equal Rights in America par. 2.) As the central figure of civil rights for African Americans, Martin Luther, forced action and change in our nation, and changed opinions of not only African Americans, but whites too. Through his powerful and emphatic speeches, white people began to believe that King was right and that segregation was not right.

After the abolishment of slavery, African Americans became free but had some rights. Racial inequality did still exist but derived by a system called "racial segregation". The whole purpose of racial segregation is the production of Caucasian Americans to keep African Americans in an adjuvant position by contradicting them equal such as ; denying the access to use public facilities and ensuring that both races live apart from one another. In late 1880 to the early 1890s, the civil rights enact segregation law was passed. Many states in south and north in the United States adopted the new law .

America, the land of the free, but is that true? The book The New Jim Crow raises many questions and forces its readers to reconsider the way we think about our judicial systems. Michelle Alexander brings up 6 main themes that we need to consider, the first one being The New Jim Crow. This is the main theme of the author’s work. She believes that our current American system of mass incarceration due to the rise in drug related arrested, is an attempt to neglect people of color, the same way that the Jim Crow laws had targeted African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In order to preserve black solidarity, there should be a precise identification of group members, loyalty and common goals and values. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, there were common goals and values between African American organizations like integration, advancement opportunities rights to full citizenship. Examples of black solidarity during the Civil Rights Movement were the March on Washington in 1963, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which helped to produce civil liberties. In the film “Making a way out of no way” African American leader, Booker T. Washington, argued that slaves should unite with each other and whites to obtain an education to enhance the conditions of the South. In President Obama’s speech “ A More Perfect Union,” he states, “we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union,” to emphasize the importance of unity in the American society.

(Voting Rights Struggle). As a result, they created an association that created two clauses that helped change the laws and give more freedom to African Americans. The South started to give African Americans responsibility and representation in government. According to the video “The Failure of Reconstruction,” the struggle between North and South shifted from the battlefield to the

The government has made many laws to stop racism in our society, but in actuality, it still exists today. Racism is not limited to just African Americans, but can also be seen with all races and cultures. There are jokes and cartoons targeting

leadership. The Civil Rights Acts and Voting Rights Act formed a legal basis to end the segregation and discrimination that has been happening in the United States. Malcolm X influenced disparate wings of the black movement. King influenced the non-violence act to the younger African-American generation to show them that violence just causes more of a problem. The radical faction of the "Black Power" movement accepted his positions on African identification, neocolonialism, black control of the political economy of black communities, and Afro-American self-defense.

Finally a suspect was found. In September 1934, one of the gold certificates showed up at a gas station in New York. The gas attendant thought the gold certificate might be “counterfeit” (Schwartz 3), so he wrote down the license plate. The car belonged to Bruno Richard Hauptmann. On September 19, 1934, Bruno Hauptmann was arrested and tried for murder on January 2, 1935.