Leading to Civil Rights Since the American Revolution African Americans had been victims of discrimination through slavery, segregation, or inequality. In the mid-1900s, blacks began to protest the unfair and humiliating treatment. They began what is commonly known as the civil rights movement. During this movement African Americans fought for justice with the use of civil disobedience and enlightened Americans of the true injustice that they were forced to face in their daily life. Some of the occurrences that led to the civil rights movement were the “Jim Crow” laws passed after the civil war, the court case “Plessy v. Ferguson”, and the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Following the Civil War in the United States, white southerners attempted to separate themselves from freed African Americans as much as they possibly could. They passed laws called Jim Crow laws to strengthen the division between the two races. These laws required total public separation between Negros and whites. The Supreme Court said that these laws were considered to be legal under the constitution, and even upheld them in several court cases. In many cases, Jim Crow laws led to violence. Whites would hang African Americans because they were suspected of having committed crimes that went against the segregation laws. Jim Crow laws were important in …show more content…
Ferguson” helped to cause the civil rights movement because the conditions of the ruling were in fact separate, but were not equal. The ruling did not respect the rights of the citizen as an individual. It was brought up again in a later court case in 1954, “Brown vs. The Board of Education”. This case argued that segregated schools also violated the 14th amendment. It overturned the “Plessy v. Ferguson” “Separate but equal” ruling. African Americans were then, by law allowed to attend any public school, but many southerners became angry because of this decision and fought for segregation with even stronger