Dbq Civil Rights Movement

Throughout the 1900’s, Many eras of civil rights movements emerged for different races, genders, and creeds because they believed they deserved better treatment than they were given by an opposing community. Although America claims to be a land of freedom and of many equalities, history has a timeline of making it evident that America has been opposed to specific communities, yet these communities have fought through blood, sweat, and tears in order to give us the rights we sometimes take for granted today. Through the LGBTQ community’s battles, the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s, and the Japanese’s battles for equality during World War II, America was forced to reflect on the present, unequal rights and change the way the country operated

The Civil Rights Era was one of great courage and bravery, as many people of color were taught how to fight in terms of silence and nonviolent protest such as sit-ins, marches, and boycotts. MLK became a powerful leader during this movement and was locked in Birmingham Jail for protesting, yet, instead of fighting this jailing, he wrote a letter to the government by making a nonviolent effort to end the segregation and injustice by joining with his organization and fighting for his beliefs. By composing this letter, King writes that he will create a “constructive, nonviolent tension” by means of communicating in terms of displaying his beliefs in a way that creates tension and, thus, a basic building block for future movements. This letter impacted the Civil Rights Movement due to the fact that it was the beginning of all unity between people of color and allowed the community to create goals together and work towards equality in an impactful way. American individuals who ignored and looked past MLK and Birmingham were, in a sense, ignoring their lives and their duties because they didn’t want to face the ugly truth that is racism. The letter allowed Americans to see a point of view from a black man, thus creating a relation, however good or bad, between the white community and the black community,

Citizens began to generalize their fear of Japanese bombers to extend to the entire Japanese population on the West Coast because they assumed that the Japanese were being used as “secret spies” to attack the coast. The government then decided it was safe to evacuate all Japanese immigrant, yet one man, Korematsu, took a stand and did not to evacuate. Korematsu wanted society to understand that just because the Japanese leaders designed a successful attack on Pearl Harbor doesn’t mean that the entire Japanese population is, in turn, a group of people with unjust moral values as well. Korematsu decided not to evacuate because of the unjust discrimination and made a court case out of this decision, thus taking it all the way to Supreme Court with a dissenting opinion that spoke of how Korematsu was “born on our soil” in speaking that he is an American citizen and will always remain one despite his ethnic background. He is a citizen of the US “by nativity” again showing that the occasion of which Korematsu was born makes him an American. Although the court decided that Japanese internment was Constitutional during the war, the case was eventually recognized as unjust and Clinton awarded Korematsu with the Medal of Freedom, honoring the fight he orchestrated for not only himself, but for the people of his