Civil Rights Movement Essay

The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. A major catalyst in the push for civil rights was in December 1955, when NAACP activist

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man.

The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. Civil rights movements are a worldwide series of political movements for equality

before

The most important civil rights movement was The March on Washington for

Jobs and Freedom was the largest civil rights protest in US history, and contributed to the successful implementation of the Civil Rights Act of

1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v.

Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. There were some names of notable civil rights activists who were active during the 19th century. The most important civil rights leaders of this period were Frederick Douglass

(1818–1895) and Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). Although not often highlighted in American history, before Rosa Parks changed

America when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus in December 1955, 19th- century African-American civil rights activists worked strenuously from the

1850s until the 1880s for the cause of equal treatment in public

As the former SNCC member Diane

Nash recalled, it was a ‘people’s movement’, fuelled by grass-roots activism (Nash, 1985). Recognising a change in the public mood, Lyndon

Johnson swiftly addressed many of the racial inequalities highlighted by the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting

Rights Act of 1965 led to meaningful change in the lives of many Black

Americans, dismantling systems of segregation and black disenfranchisement. In other respects, the civil rights movement was less revolutionary. It did not fundamentally restructure American society, nor did it end racial discrimination. In the economic sphere, in particular, there was still much work to be done. Across the nation, and especially in northern cities, stark racial inequalities were commonplace, especially in terms of access to jobs and housing. As civil rights activists became frustrated by their lack of progress in these areas, the movement began to splinter towards the end of the 1960s, with many Black activists embracing violent methods. Over the subsequent decades, racial inequalities have persisted, and in recent years police brutality against

Black Americans, in particular, has become an urgent issue. As