Compare And Contrast The Civil Rights Movement Of The 1950's And 1960s

Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and

1960s

Civil rights are the rights in a community, state, or nation. Civil rights in most democratic countries include freedom of speech, of the press, and of religion. Others are the right to own property, and to receive fair and equal treatment from government, other persons, and private groups, and the right to peaceful protest. Civil rights are protected by law. The constitutions of many democracies have bills of rights that describe basic liberties and rights. Courts of law decide whether a person's civil rights have been violated. The courts also determine the limits of civil rights, so that people do not use their freedoms in order to violate the rights of others.

In many nondemocratic countries

Laws exist in many countries to give equal rights to all men and women regardless of their race or religion, but in some countries discrimination on racial or religious grounds is part of government policy. One of the civil rights campaigns was that of black Americans in the United States, who campaigned for equal rights.

This campaign led to a major protest movement during the 1950's and 1960's.

The cause and effect to the civil rights movement were initiated by the African American teen visiting relatives in Mississippi from Chicago, the intensity in Selma, Alabama, Rosa Park refusal; integrate Little

Rock central high school and James Meredith.

Racism resulted as the murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was visiting his relative in Mississippi and was murdered and his body thrown in Tallahatchie River. Emmett Till broke the unwritten law of the

Jim Crow south (Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern

United States). Emmett Till’s mother decides to let the world see what happened to her son through open casket funeral. Many people worldwide saw the brutality Emmett Till suffered. At trial

On

December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks got arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the segregated city bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. This led the segregation of public transportation to come under attack. The law required that when the white section of the bus become full African Americans to sit in the back of city buses and to give up their seats to whites. Rosa Parks was a well respected figure in the community her arrest was finally enough to convince African-Americans that they could no longer stand discrimination laws. The arrest of Rosa Park inspired the black leaders and Ann Robinson to organize a protest for 40,000 people within two days.

On December 5, members of the African American community assembled at the Holt Street Baptist

Church in Montgomery to vote to keep the protest going. The city's black residents began a boycott of city buses. The group that organized boycotts recruited King, a 27-year-old preacher; King gave an inspiring speech” If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong." The bus