Act Of Courage

“Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?” (Hamer). Authors talk about the changes of society that take place in America. They also talk about the differences of education for children who were black and white. Eric Foner, John Garraty, and Fannie Lou Hamer explain to the people how hard it was for African Americans to register to vote. Changes were taking place all over America.

In “An Act of Courage,” a woman, Rosa Parks, began to change the segregation of blacks and whites on buses. One day in December, “Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested that day for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses.” (“An Act of Courage”). The bus driver asked Mrs. Parks to move from her seat

“....She was charged with ‘refusing to obey orders of bus driver.’.... Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years…. For a quiet act of defiance that resonated throughout the world, Rosa Parks is known and revered as the ‘Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.’” (“An Act of Courage”). Another event that took place to change society was “The Greensboro Sit-Ins.” Four black men, known as the “Greensboro Four,” got the idea for a sit-in from the fight for racial equality, and they “...had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young black boy, Emmett Till…” (“The Greensboro Sit-Ins”). Even though the four men were not given service, the men did not give up their seats. As the media heard about the sit-in taken by the men, they quickly began to cover what was happening at the diner in Greensboro. “Heavy television coverage of the a Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that spread quickly to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young blacks and whites joined in various forms to peaceful protest against segregation in

It was a registration drive that wanted to help increase voter registration in Mississippi. “Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South. The Mississippi project was run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an association of civil rights groups in which sncc was the most active member.” (Foner and Garraty). The Freedom Summer project took place in Mississippi since it has had the lowest levels of African American voter registration. Three men were murdered the day after the registration began. Everyone in Mississippi became afraid of what was to come. Whites and blacks couldn 't trust one another anymore. Fannie Lou Hamer went before the Credentials Committee to tell her story of what happened to her when she went and registered to vote. She explained to them how she went to register to vote, and when she returned home, she discovered that she had lost her job. When Hamer tried to register other people to vote, she was arrested, and she explained to the committee that she was beaten in jail by other prisoners who were forced to beat her by an officer. Hamer was surprised when she discovered that black people could vote. Voting rights were changing for African