History: Life Before The Civil Rights Movement

Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still lived in a unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence. This is when the Civil Rights Movement was introduced; an era dedicated to activism for equal rights and treatment of African Americans in the United States. During this period, people rallied for social, legal, political, and cultural changes to end discrimination and segregation. This era included endless amount of events involving discrimination to minorities. This movement occurred somewhere between 1955 and 1965 but the exact time span is debated.

The African American Civil Rights Movement officially “began” in 1954, but the ideas of Civil Rights had been brewing since the end of the Civil War, and even earlier. The Civil Rights Movement was centered on the idea of the equal, fair, and constitutional treatment of African Americans in the United States. The movement features some of history’s most prominent figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks. Throughout the movement, activists utilized protests, marches, boycotts, and strikes in attempts to change public opinion and governmental action on African Americans. The movement succeeded in overturning

Tracing back to the time period of the Triangular Trade, African-Americans were brought to America as slaves and were treated as the inferiors. Most of them were not granted for the basic human rights that they deserved. After the Civil Wars, the African- Americans were finally freed form the identity of slaves, but still treated unequally. During the 1950s and 1960s, the era of the Civil Rights Movement has occurred, which involved numerous movements that many of the Africans-Americans participated eagerly. Equal rights, educational opportunities, prohibit discriminations, and end of the segregations were the main focus of these movements. Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most important acts that marked the end of the unequal application of voter registration requirement and racial segregation. The most significant events that led to the Civil Rights Act of

Black people, even today, are subject to racially motivated violence and discrimination in their everyday lives. In the 20th century this kind of treatment was accepted and even at times prompted by authorities. Back then, brutal murders of black men, women, and children

African Americans have always faced prejudice and discrimination based off the color of their skin rather than the content of their character, even after they received “freedom.” However, during reconstruction especially, African Americans were faced with discrimination. To begin with, stated in document 1, the Black Codes, which basically were a set of laws placed to restrict the freedoms of African Americans. In the Black Codes, all basic rights (such as in the Bill of Rights) were revoked. African Americans weren’t allowed to own property, assemble, preach, bear arms, sell or barter, and had to work under white men. As a result of the Black Codes, African Americans basically had one of four options: be a tenant farmer, be a sharecropper, be a homestead farmer, or be homeless.

    The Civil Rights Movement was a zealous and essential period in American History. The civil rights movement began in 1954 and was led by African Americans to outlaw racial discrimination against Blacks. One century after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, African Americans still observing segregation and various forms of oppression and “Jim Crow” laws. The nonviolent and civil disobedience protests were used by the civil rights activists to bring about change. Some significant leaders within the Black community were Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Malcolm X, and W.E.B. Du Bois.

In the mid 19th century racism had started to occur. Then it quickly transferred into slavery where than African Americans were slaves to the whites. The African Americans were not brought to America by choice but because the whites decided to use them for slavery. Some whites would trade them for any house supplies they needed, and they were sold to the colonist of Europe. Where then they had labor work that needed to be done, African’s did not get a wage for doing this labor. There was a law that Africans were not considered humans, but objects that worked. When Americans won the land from the british, Africans were not exactly free from slavery. Slavery was a hard subject to talk about but they still did not receive the respect they needed. They were not even

The Civil Rights Movement began in order to bring equal rights and equal voting rights to black citizens of the US. This was accomplished through persistent demonstrations, one of these being the Selma-Montgomery March. This march, lead by Martin Luther King Jr., targeted at the disenfranchisement of negroes in Alabama due to the literacy tests. Tension from the governor and state troopers of Alabama led the state, and the whole nation, to be caught in the violent chaos caused by protests and riots by marchers. However, this did not prevent the March from Selma to Montgomery to accomplish its goals abolishing the literacy tests and allowing black citizens the right to vote.

In 1865 all slaves were emancipated which declared them free, but racism was far from over. In the South, freed African Americans continued to be killed as an act of racial violence. Between the period of 1865-1905 African Americans fought to defeat their oppression. By the year 1905, freedmen were still fighting for the same rights they were fighting for in 1865. African Americans were oppressed in many regards, a great example of this is the black codes. These codes were written into Louisiana law which prohibited blacks from passing within the limits of said parish without a special permit, renting or buying a house within said parish, working without a white person supervising them,

For the longest time there were a lot of different views on African Americans and their place in the world. They were looked down upon and failed to be treated as citizens, but treated as animals. Three different court cases largely effected the civil rights movement by bringing together our schools, slowly desegregating our lives and improving equality of everyone: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, and University of California vs. Bakke.

Slowly, African Americans were given more rights but were still looked down upon by many Caucasian Americans. Although they were free, they were still given minimal rights and kept fighting for their freedom. Racial profiling still remained and transpired into the segregation of black and whites.

African Americans were always thought to be inferior to the white supremacy in the United States. Although the Civil War had abolished slavery, blacks were still very ill-treated. Blacks were to not associate with the white society. They were banned from restaurants, bathrooms, parks, schools, hospitals, and much more. Whites constantly abused the blacks to the point that African American life expectancy was 7 years less compared to the whites (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/). Society believed that a black could cause something to lose value for example “property values would drop a great deal if an African American family moved into a neighborhood that was not considered a ghetto”. African Americans began to stand up against the racial

Not only would companies hire white workers before they would black workers, but they would oftentimes fire black workers before they would the white workers. This put a strain on the racism of the south, and many white americans would look down upon blacks (The 1930s: Lifestyle and Social Trends: Overview). Not only were the blacks paid poorly during the 1930s, but the whites treat them unfairly; in 1877 the government put up a system known as the Jim Crow Laws, these laws would stay in place for decades until the 1950s. The Jim Crow laws were put in place to segregate the blacks from the whites. Blacks during this time could not walk into the same restaurant as a white man or drink from the same water fountain because the black man did not match the white man’s skin (Racism in the 1920s &

As the years went on racism began to become more hateful and people of color could not stand by and watch. In 1954 African Americans started a movement called The Civil Rights Movement, which would last for over ten years and make a huge impact in society forever. The Civil Rights Movement was a movement that was started because of inequality for African Americans. Blacks wanted equal rights and opportunities as whites had (nationalhumanitiescenter.org). “Much of our memory of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s is embodied in dramatic photographs, newsreels, and recorded speeches, which America encountered in daily papers and the nightly news” (nationalhumanitiescenter.org). During this time The Civil Rights Movement was depicted as dangerous and complete chaos, which was exactly what it was. Blacks created peaceful protest to stand up for what they believed in and they wanted others on their side, that weren’t African American. “Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies had no interest in whether John F. Kennedy felt for black people's plight "in his heart," as the Black Lives Matter questioner put it to Hillary Clinton in August” (galegroup.com). The purpose of the movement was to gain equal rights as everyone else and as long as they could get people of white skin on their side, they did not care about their beliefs deep down. Today racism has developed from its early stages and seems not to be as serious as it was but it is still alive and

There was also widespread destruction of black property. The tremendous suffering of colored people is one of the biggest inequality systems of a society. However, after the Civil War, everything supposes to be equal between African American and others. Even though they got rights but they became segregated from the society. Everything was separated like schools, church, neighborhood, transit, etc. Also, Black merchant faced problem to do business with White people and found trouble getting capital and product supply. Black children found discrimination in schools, playground, and other places. Still, now some of them get discriminated because of stratification. Some people still insult them with their past.