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The Importance Of The Civil Rights Movement

Decent Essays

The official definition of a right, is a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way. As we know today, our rights are meant for every American citizen. However, throughout 1945 to 1965, Americans as a majority didn’t quite see it in the same way. Americans perceived their rights to only be applicable to white Americans, not to anyone else. They would pick and choose who got what rights, and most of the time, they would choose what would ultimately benefit themselves and not the country. Not very surprisingly, as seen through historical periods such as the Gaines Case, the Little Rock resistance, and McCarthy’s targeting of schools, white men were the ones who decided what rights were given, and who they were given to.
Education is a prime example of how not only our rights as Americans, but also how we were exercising them came into question. The Gaines case in 1938 for example, was the beginning of the Supreme Court’s reconsideration of the “separate but equal” decision made by the Plessy v. Ferguson case (Civil Rights Movement). Lloyd Gaines, an African American wanted to go to law school at the University of Missouri and wasn’t admitted because of his skin color (Civil Rights Movement). Although this was still a time that schools were segregated, it always continues to surprise me that we as Americans, would deny someone wanting to go into law school just because of the color of his or her skin. Or that we would deny them of

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