The Civil Rights Movement

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In 1957 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed in Atlanta where Martin Luther King Jr, became the president of this organization to later become a central leader to this movement. The SCLC wanted to be a compliment to the NAACP legal movement by encouraging them the use of nonviolent demonstrations and boycotts.

An example of this nonviolent demonstrations was on February 1 1960 when four black student from North Carolina A&T University protested racial segregation in restaurants sitting at a “white only” counter during lunch and waiting to be served, a few days later the sit-ins had spread throughout North Carolina and weeks later were taking place across the South.

Another example of this Social movement and probably the biggest was the March on Washington D.C. on August 28th of 1963 where more than 200,000 people gathered around the Lincoln Memorial showing support towards this movement and also to pressure the Kennedy administration to pass the civil rights legislation and it was this event where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous inspirational “I have a dream” speech. As a result of the march President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights law. Following Kennedy’s assassination Lyndon Johnson conducted the bill through Congress. This bill prohibited segregation in public spaces and any kind of discrimination in education or employment. In 1968 a new bill passed that ended discrimination in housing. White resistance arose taking it to extreme levels including several killings. Many lawmakers began calling for federal voting-rights legislation. Such legislation was displayed following events in Selma, Alabama. Dr. King and the SCLC went there in February 1965 and after two failed attempts he led an 87-km (54-mi) march from Selma to Montgomery. Three activists lost their lives during the Selma demonstrations and in August 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act; once the voting rights act of 1965 passed the movement started to switch from its non-violent roots.

Black Power

The new leader Stokely Carmichael started to popularized the term: Black Power, having been influenced by the philosophy of Malcolm X, leader of the Nation of Islam. Black power called for black separatism, self-defense against white violence and self-sufficiency, exercising economic autonomy and preservation of their African heritage.

The Black Panther Party (BPP) were an organization founded in Oakland California in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seales; even though they had a reputation for having aggressive approaches to civil rights they were also involved in survival programs such as free health clinics, free breakfast programs, ambulance patrols, voter registration assistance, etc. Around mid-1970s the black-power movement faded away due to the lack of support of the larger African American populace.

The Movement Legacy

Several people argue that the Civil Rights Movement ended on April 4th 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. Following his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, riots erupted in 125 U.S. cities, this sparked the end to the Civil Rights Movement. Others argued that it ended with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and yet others contended that it was a struggle still going on. The modern African-American civil rights movement, like similar movements earlier, have transformed American democracy. This also served as a model for other group advancement and group pride efforts involving women, students, Chicanos, gays and lesbians, the elderly, and many others.

Observers maintain that the movement has a mixed legacy; it produced major legislation that reformed American society, it opened up new political, social, and economic opportunities to blacks, however, Veterans of the movement lament that it fell short of addressing the economic needs of poor Americans. In the early 2000s, rates of poverty and unemployment among African Americans remained twice as high as those of whites. For a variety of reasons, including low levels of access to health care, the longevity of African Americans is less than that of whites. Black median income is approximately 70 percent of white income, black inner-city areas feature very high rates of students dropping out of high school, violent crime, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, family breakups, and drug addiction. The rates of arrests and imprisonment of African American men far exceed those of white men. In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson hoped that America, having rallied around effective civil rights and acts that promoted legal equality, could move on to tackle serious social and economic inequality—but in the early twenty-first century, that goal still seems out of reach.

RESOURCES

History.com Staff. "Civil Rights Movement." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

Davis, Jack E. "Civil Rights Movement." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2014. Web. 13 Dec. 2016

"The Civil Rights Movement And The Second Reconstruction, 1945-1968 | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives." The Civil Rights Movement And The Second Reconstruction, 1945–1968 | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

Patterson, James T. "The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies." The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies | The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.

"African-American Civil Rights Movement." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.