How Did Rock And Roll Affect The Civil Rights Movement

The major region which produced rock and roll was in the Southern area of the United States. Rock and roll is a style of music with a variety of music styles integrated within such as gospel, the blues, country, folk, and more. The influence of rock n roll originated through a merging of African American musical tradition and European instrumentation. 1950s rock and roll had a significant impact on the status quo of American society due to the conflicts of racial identity that were happening at the time. The period of the 1950s was the prime time in which Jim’s crow law was being practiced in regions of the United states; mostly concentrated in the South. Jim’s crow law stated that it was completely constitutional to have public facilities for blacks and whites as long as the facilities remained “separate but equal.” There were five cases that fought against the unconstitutionality of

Ferguson were some of the cases led by a legal attorney firm and organization called the NAACP(Altschuler, 35). The NAACP is a well known and prominent organization set up to speak and fight for civil rights amongst minorities such as African Americans. These cases were very media frenzy which evoked a lot anger in pro-segregationists. Rock and roll may have contributed to the civil rights movement because both African-American and white American teens enjoyed the music. However, many whites did not want to share the music style with African Americans. The whites proceeded with acts to prevent African Americans from entering the rock and roll world such as exploit black performers, bleach the music, and heavily promote white rock ’n’ rollers (Altschuler, 36). Although whites attempted to segregate African Americans from Rock and roll, both cultures were still integrated into one whole music style. This proves that segregation did not have a full effect on the communities because even though Southern states did everything in their power to