Equal Rights Dbq

As a result of the reconstruction, the United States was trying to unite the country but still needed to gain equal rights. One turning point in history was The Voting Rights Act of 1965 because the legislation would finally secure the fifteenth amendment for African Americans that outlawed poll taxes and literacy tests. The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of treatment. (Amendment XV) Many activists arranged protests and campaigns but only led to even more segregation throughout the nation. All Americans needed to be treated with equality before the problem could be fixed. There was still segregation of African

The segregation of African Americans and Whites were everywhere in the South; they could not ride on the same rail or bus together or even go to restaurants. Finally in after years of being treated horribly, the African American community started standing up for themselves. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in 1955 to a white man, which sparked an intense protest by blacks and concerned whites. The more small protest, the more the movement started to spread. The Civil Rights Movement began as blacks and whites joined to oppose unfair laws and to promote equal rights for all American citizens. The Selma Marches consisted of three different marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the Civil Rights Movement. The rallies grew out of the continued discrimination of African Americans in the South. On March 7th, 1965,

Under the Civil Rights Act, discrimination toward race and religion was forbidden from places like parks, theaters, and restaurants. An author and political analyst Ofari-Hutchinson said, “I know all African- Americans, no matter what age, what their religion or political convictions, or social standing, education or profession, all uniformly took pride at that moment,” when asked what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 meant to her. Although the Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education case that segregation in schools were unconstitutional, though the efforts were not taken very seriously at public schools and universities, the Civil Rights Act had a profound effect on schools. The Act required schools to actual steps to ending segregation, whether it was by redistricting or busing children to different school, they were required to do something now. Martin Luther King Jr said, “it was nothing less than a second emancipation.” The Civil Rights Act paved the way for two major laws, the Voting Act 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. During the Civil Rights movement, many voters that were African Americans were mistreated and treated with violence. Though after the Civil War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, which prohibited states for denying a male citizen the freedom to vote based on race, their skin color, or previous condition of servitude, for decades African Americans continued to be