Effectiveness Of The Civil Rights Movement In The 1960s

The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s was a time of peaceful or nonviolent protest done mostly by everyday citizens of the United States. While there were monumental changes that happened before the 60s, like the desegregation of the U.S. military and Brown v. Board of Education, nonviolent protests were a new tactic that proved to work well. Nonviolent protests, mean exactly as the name states, a protest that does not use force against the opposing side. These protests were incredibly effective in changing laws for the betterment of African American people. The Montgomery bus boycott and the Greensboro sit-ins are both examples of nonviolent protests that happened during the 1960s. Nonviolent protests were effective because showing that the

Even though African Americans were allowed to shop at Woolworth, they weren’t allowed to sit at the lunch counter and order food. That is until 4 college students, Jibreel Khazan Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond, decided to change that. They sat down at the lunch counter after buying something in the store, and instead of leaving when the waitress told them to they waited until close because they had yet to be served at the lunch counter. Then, they came back the next day and the next even while facing violence from other people in the Woolworth. Soon people joined them, not only in that Woolworth but in other places where African Americans wouldn’t be served across the country. John Lewis said “Greensboro became the message.” Greensboro showed the country that African Americans were committed to not being violent in the face of violence from other people and it encouraged others to hold sit-ins of their own. Greensboro was a victory in two ways, the lunch counter was desegregated and it showed people that even when African Americans were doing nothing physically harmful to the white people in the diner they were being