Essay On The Civil Rights Movement

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” Martin Luther King Jr., this quote speaks volumes about the Civil Rights movement. The movement itself occupies approximately 100 years of our nations 238 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. During those one hundred years there were numerous failures, but countless triumphs. The Civil Rights Movement itself occupied time from approximately early 1850 to mid-1960s (Davis). The primary goal of the entire Civil Rights Movement was to restore the rights that were already granted to African-American citizens from the Thirteenth Amendment. This movement caused a surge in legislation that successively disenfranchised African-American citizens for many years (Wikipedia).

At the very beginning of the African-American civil rights movement stood Fredrick Douglass, a freed slave and a leader in the abolitionist movement (Wikipedia). He laid the foundational goals for the African-American Civil Rights Movement: to end slavery and to have all the rights allowed to them as American citizens restored (Douglass). Achieving the goal of ending slavery and perpetual freedom, political tactics such as motivational speeches by Fredrick Douglass and national legislation were utilized. When he spoke on July 5, 1852 Mr. Douglass described, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” he foreshadowed the legislative issues that would become prominent in next phase of the movement. He knew the Declaration of Independence was filled with unfulfilled rights that affect African-Americans, and that the Constitution allowed slavery (Douglass). Douglass also believed in a gradual move to full rights for African-Americans; believing that they must end slavery first, then organize labor and finally the African-American vote (Douglass). During