Civil Rights Movement Non-Minorities

Identification and Evaluation of Sources

This investigation will explore the question “how did non-minorities in the United States affect the Civil Rights Movement?” The reactions and influences of non-minorities are not often talked about when learning about the Civil Rights Movement. Because of this, this investigation will focus on the impact this movement had on white people and how they affected it as well. The first source that will be evaluated in depth is “Supreme Court Drama: Cases That Changed America” by Daniel E. Brannen Jr., Richard Clay Hanes, and Rebecca Valentine, published in 2011. This source is valid because it is a textbook written by experienced writers and lawyers. Daniel E. Brannen Jr. is a lawyer with a law degree

They joined black people in the sit-ins of 1960, the freedom rides of 1961, and marches in the south (Brannen, Hanes and Valentine, 873). Students from the University of California- Berkeley participated in many protests (Heirich). These actions gained fame and became known as the 1960s Berkeley Protests. The students not only protested the Civil Rights Movement, but they also protested the Free Speech Movement and the violence of the Vietnam War. Their first well known event was the Sheraton Palace Demonstration. The Sheraton Palace Demonstration was where students protested to put an end to the lack of African Americans being hired at the hotel and the lack of African Americans who held executive positions. Approximately four thousand people participated in protesting and occupying the hotel, a high percentage of this number being white University of California- Berkeley students. When the fall semester began again, white students took it upon themselves to educate their peers on the Civil Rights Movement, and the abuses black people were facing. Their ultimate goal being to end racial discrimination in the Bay Area (Freeman). These events show how non-minorities affected the movement because some of them were just as willing to fight for equality as black people were. Non-minorities knew the power society game them over African-Americans, and used this to their advantage to help give some

Black people were expected to address white people as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” while white people were not expected to do the same. Many white southerners believed that black people were alright with the roles of inequality that were bestowed upon them. When the uprising of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s proved this not to be true, non-minorities rose up in resistance (Friedman, 62). The anti-civil rights non-minorities influenced the movement by inhibiting it. They fought against the rights African Americans had been fighting for for years. Because of the large amount of social power white people held over black people during this time period, people were more willing to listen to what non-minorities had to say over African