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The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement Essay

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Before one woman refused to head to the back of the bus, before there was a voice to peacefully express the dream, before Jim Crow was scared away, there were organizations, fighters and events that contributed to the advancement of African Americans. As W.E.B. Du Bois provided the diving board that would allow blacks to dive into the pool of equality, he is found at the origin of the Civil Rights Movement. The Pan-Africanism movement, the rage following the Red Summer, and the Great Migration continued the efforts of W.E.B. Du Bois. The bold and striking words and actions of Marcus Garvey showed whites that blacks would not be called an inferior race any longer. Following World War II, many bounds toward racial equality were …show more content…

It was difficult for African Americans to fight the group whose mere name instituted terror. African Americans had little opportunity to better themselves economically. Some laws prohibited them from teaching and from entering certain other businesses and professions. Large numbers of blacks had to take low-paying jobs as farm hands or as servants for white employers. Many others were forced to become sharecroppers or tenant framers. They rented small plots of land and paid the rent with money earned from the crops. Struggling to survive, many ran up huge debts to their white landlords or the town merchants. Fortunately, there were rays of sunshine forcing their way through this cloudy time. In 1900, Henry Slyvester Williams of Trinidad and Tobago introduced Pan-Africanism, the idea that people of African descent share a common destiny – that their forced dispersal through the transatlantic slave trade, their common oppression under colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean, and under Jim Crow segregation in the United States, had created parallel contours for struggle (Marable). This global esprit de corps encouraged blacks to continuing fighting for equal rights in the United States. After Williams’ death in 1911, W.E.B. Du Bois continued the Pan-Africanist movement. He led Pan-African Congresses held in Paris in 1919, in London, Paris and Brussels in 1921, in London, Paris and Lisbon in 1923, and in New York in 1927. These

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