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The Civil Rights Movement In The 1960's

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The decade of 1960s marked tremendous progress in the development of civil rights in the United States. A series of laws were passed to eliminate segregation and discrimination on the federal level. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in employment practices and ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities. And the Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. Although the passing of these laws had ended the era of discrimination and unequal rights for the Blacks, many states and cities still blocked the Blacks from getting their rights, such as voting. Many Black people …show more content…

During its early years, Moses led the organization in the voter registration project he initiated in McComb, Mississippi. The Black belt in the south had very high Black population but with very few registered Black voters because registering Black voters was extremely difficult and dangerous. The Blacks who attempted to register sometimes lost their homes and jobs. SNCC realized this issue and as Amzie Moore told Bob Moses, “if Black people in the Black Belt were allowed to vote, they could elect officials at every level who could represent their concerns.” Confronted by the local White power, SNCC did not give up easily. They conducted voter registration workshops, opened “voter registration school”, and launched “freedom registration”. Their persistence and patience in the nonviolence grassroots organization finally led to the success they deserved. Because of SNCC’s persistence and the Black people’s struggle to gain voting, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote in

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Freedom Summer, by author Bruce Watson examines the courageous and passionate efforts of roughly 100 predominantly white college students as well as several local black Mississippi residents who stood up for change and equality while pushing the limit of uncertain futures. The book discusses the journey these students encountered in order to reach their aim of voter equality and opportunity for blacks in the south. The objective of these students was to create a voter registration system in the heart of segregated and unjust Mississippi. In 1964, they did just that. This “Mississippi Project” as it was sometimes called was run by local civil rights group council in the state known as the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO).

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To make blacks actively participate in political matters by doubling the number of black voters, thereby transforming an old isolated black to the “new negro” was an important goal of the crusade for citizenship program. However, the crusade failed to meet its goal of doubling the number of black voters. Both external and internal factors caused the result. First and foremost gaining the right to vote confronted a fierce opposition from whites. Whites’ challenges were: economic threats, gerrymandering and requiring a literacy test pass for voters (illiteracy was a big problem for blacks at that time).

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Baker famously stated, “strong people don’t need strong leaders”. Relating to a point brought up in Cobb’s book, “nonviolent direction actions” (90) brought upon real change in the South with SNCC leading at the forefront of voter registration drives for African-American beliefs. Done in the early 1960s, during the latter half of decade other Black groups would empathize political power spurred by African-Americans as a key ingredient to ensuring their rights increased as citizens in the country. The early grassroots organizing done by groups such as SNCC played a crucial role in the success of the

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He led African Americans to freedom of voting and their opinion being recognized. According to the book, Constitutional Amendments, “The Act focused on 7 southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia) and outlawed restrictive voting requirements that denied the right of a U. S. citizen to vote because of race, color, or membership” (Pendergast et al. 313). Therefore the African Americans now had the freedom to vote and have a say in government decisions. Many organizations have tried to help form more freedom for African Americans by creating protests. According to article “Voting Rights Struggle,” “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, various black individuals, and other civil rights organizations continued to work through the political and judicial systems to overturn the legal obstacles, and some progress was made including the outlawing of grandfather clauses (1915) and the white primary (1944)”

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During this time African Americans were given the right to vote, if you were male, and citizenship. However, the federal government and state governments limited these right in every they legally could. States cheated black voters in a variety of ways, from poll taxes, to holding white-only primary elections, to unreasonably difficult

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Throughout the 1890s, Southern states enacted the “Jim Crow” laws, which were very similar to the Black Codes. These laws made it illegal for blacks and whites to share public facilities. Schools, hospitals, restaurants, even drinking fountains were segregated. By 1910, blacks were no longer allowed to vote in the south. These laws stayed in effect up until the 1960s, when the civil rights movement launched an all-out campaign against them.

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African American men faced the hurdles of literacy tests and poll taxes, which, although they possessed the legal right to vote, served as significant obstacles, greatly impeding their ability to participate in the electoral process. Document 5 -. Portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 state that, “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” This act removed the power of the states to deny voting rights to their citizens based on race, representing a significant milestone in the march toward equality. States made efforts to maintain segregation by unfairly arresting individuals solely based on their race.

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Significant amounts of people today often do not comprehend how recently African-Americans truly gained the right to vote. About fifty-some years ago, less than one generation, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act; a landmark piece of federal legislation. The Voting Rights Act help African-Americans across the nation to overcome the legal barriers, such as the racially discriminatory Jim Crow Laws, that often prevented them from exercising their right to vote—which is guaranteed under the fifteen amendment, in national, state, and local elections. More specially, from the ratification of the fifteen amendment to the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act, African-Americans, as well as other minority groups, endure countless

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Even though the government adopted the Voting Rights Act in 1965, African Americans’ suffrages were still restricted because of southern states’ obstructions. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was important for blacks to participate in political elections, but before this act was passed, there were several events led to its proposal. The government gave African Americans’ the right to vote by passing the 15th Amendment, but in the Southern States, blacks’ suffrages were limited by grandfather clauses, “poll taxes, literacy tests, and other bureaucratic restrictions” (ourdocuments.gov). As times went on, most African Americans couldn’t register their votes.

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