Black Rights Essay, Research Paper
The quest for equality by black Americans played a central role in the struggle for civil
rights in the postwar era. Stemming from an effort dating back to the Civil War and
Reconstruction, the black movement had gained more momentum by the mid-twentieth
century. African Americans continued to press forward for more equality through
peaceful demonstrations and protests. But change came slowly indeed. Rigid segregation
of public accommodations remained the ruled in the South, despite a victory in the
Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott in 1955. School integration occurred after the Brown
v. Board of Education decision of 1954, but not without struggles. In the North, urban
ghettos grew, as the growth of blacks grew. Crowded public housing, poor schools, and
limited economic opportunities fostered serious discontent.
In the North and South alike, consciousness of the need to combat racial
discrimination grew. Support bubbled up from different social groups. Young people in
particular, most of them students, enlisted in the effort to change restricted patterns deeply
rooted in American life. In 1962, the civil rights movement accelerated. James Meredith,
a black air force veteran and student at Jackson State College, applied to the all-white
University of Mississippi and rejected on racial grounds. Suing to gain admission, he
carried his case to the Supreme Court, where Justice Hugo Black affirmed his claim. But
then Governor Ross Barnett, and adamant racist, announced that Meredith would not be
admitted, whatever the Court decision, and on one occasion personally blocked the way.
A major riot followed; tear gas covered the University grounds; and by the riots end, two
men lay dead and hundreds hurt.
An even more violent confrontation began in April 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama,
where local black leaders encouraged Martin Luther King,Jr., to launch another attack on
the southern segregation. Forty percent black, the city was rigidly segregated along racial
and class lines. ?We believed that while a campaign in Birmingham would surly be the
toughest fight of our civil rights careers, King later explained, ?it could, if successful,
break the back of segregation all over the nation.? Though the demonstrations were
nonviolent, the responses were not. City officials declared that protest marches violated
city regulations against parading without a license, and, over a five-week period, they
arrested 2,200 blacks, some of them schoolchildren. Police Commissioner Eugene ?Bull?
Connor used high-pressure fire hoses, electric cattle prods, and trained police dogs to
force the protesters back. As the media recorded events, Americans watching television
and reading newspapers were horrifies. The images of violence in Birmingham created
much sympathy for black Americans? civil rights struggle.
In August of 1963, civil rights protesters arranged massive march on Washington
D.C. to lobby for the end of segregation. The hih point of this day was the address by
Martin Luther King, Jr. King was long interested in Ghandi?s theroy of nonviolent
protest. At this march on Washington, he proclaimed his faith in the decency of his fellow
citizens and in their ability to extend promises of the Constitution and the Declaration of
Independence to every American citizen.
?I have a dream,? King declared, ?that one day this nation will rise up and live out
the true meaning of its creed:?We hold these trues to be self -evident, that all men are
created equal.? I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former
slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit together at the table of
brotherhood.? King ended his famous speech by quoting from an old hymn:?Free at
last!Free at last!Thank God almighty, we are free at last!?
Despite the many advances by the black civil rights? leaders, racisl tensions still are
apparent in today?s society. Martin Luther King was shot and assasinated for his civil
rights work. All he wanted was for blacks and whites to be equal. The seperation gap has
become less wide though. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed and it outlawed racial
discrimination in all public accommodations, and in 1965, the Voting Rights Act was
passed. This Act allowed federal examiners to register black voters where necessary.
There is still a long way to go in the fight against discrimination, but we are moving closer
and closer each day.