This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country” (Lyndon B. Johnson). The civil rights were the hardest times for African Americans to do anything from going to school, to even going to the bathroom, they were not aloud to be associated with anything the whites were able to do. They were sprayed with water hoses when they marched the streets fighting for their rights. Most people saw them for being nasty people because of their skin color, not everyone saw them for who they were, they were just like the whites just a different skin color. It is unfair how they were treated, looking back and seeing how they were treated, us whites should be ashamed of how we treated them. When people become dissatisfied with the way they are treated they fight for their rights: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Shelley v. Kramer, and Brown v. Board of the Education. In the past when a African American slave would move to a free state …show more content…
they would then become a free man or women but not in the case of Dred Scott. Dred Scott who had been a slave for many years moved to Wisconsin which at the time was a free state. Dred Scott and his wife moved back to a slave state and upon arrival they were told that they were no longer free people, that they were now slaves again. Dred Scott could not believe what he was being told so he went to the court and argued that he was a free man. "However, what appeared to be a straightforward lawsuit between two private parties became an 11-year legal struggle" (Dred Scott v. Sanford). After 11 years of battling it out, the court ruled with the whites and made the decision that slaves were not considered a part of this United States which means they are not citizens of the United States. The judge made the decision that African Americans and slaves were not guaranteed any freedom or rights from the federal government. This case is important to the civil rights because it shows how slaves were discriminated and how whites will do anything to not give the slaves the ability to be free. It also shows that the whites had no heart, and that the white people would harass these people because of there skin color, it just shows that whites were nasty and did not see the slaves for who they were. This case is important because these people were supposed to be free but because they came back to a slave state they were told that they were a slave again. They were forced to become slaves again. The slaves experience was horrible, they shouldn't have been treated like that. However Shelley v. Kramer white people were unable to rent any property to black or Asian people in a certain neighborhood. However one day this white family rented some property to a black person, and later got in trouble for renting it. During this the neighborhood decided to get a document signed saying that blacks and Asians couldn't rent any property. So when the black person rented some land, the neighborhood took it to the court. As a result the court had to make a decision whether to side with the white people or the African Americans and Asians. Therefore the judgment was that the African Americans can buy property in that neighborhood and that the reason why is because the neighborhood didn't get all the home owners to sign the document therefore they can't say that they need to put it into effect. The importance of this case is that the African Americans were unable to buy land from whites in a certain neighborhood and they were being discriminated and it made them seem like they were unwanted. "The Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection applies in this case to prohibit the enforcement of the restrictive covenant at issue due to the fact that the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment apply only where there is state action" (Shelley v. Kramer). Shelley v. Kramer just shows that people were treated so unfairly that African Americans were not able to rent land in this one neighborhood from whites. In addition to adults having to fight for their rights, kids had to fight for their rights.
In Brown v. Board of Education a little girl had to walk blocks and blocks just to get to school. She would have to leave hours before school and would return home late at night. The African American people were not aloud to go to the same schools as the whites. Brown's parents took this to court asking why their child was not aloud to go to school with the whites. "Arguments were to be heard during the next term to determine just how the ruling would be imposed" (Brown v. Board of Education). As a result the court decided to desegregate schools, and make whites and blacks go to school together immediately. This is important because it desegregated schools. Whites got mad because they didn't want to desegregate schools and they were mad because they did not believe that whites should have to go to school with the
blacks. People who saw how unfairly they were treated stood up for what they believed in: Dred Scott v. Sanford, Shelly v. Kramer, and Brown v. Board of Education. Overall during the civil rights the colored people were not sided with, the courts actually had the opposing view saying that they didn't have all the rights that the white people had. They were treated so unfairly that they had to stand up for their rights, and when they did stand up for their rights they got in trouble, they were sprayed with hoses and they were thrown in jail most of the time. The ignorance that the white people had against the black people just shows that they only really cared about themselves and they viewed colored people differently. "If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward" (Martin Luther King, Jr.).
In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s there were many issues that involved racial segregation with many different communities. A lot of people did not took a stand for these issues until they were addressed by other racial groups. Mendez vs Westminster and Brown vs The Board of Education, were related cases that had to take a stand to make a change. These two cases helped many people with different races to come together and be able to go to school even if a person was different than the rest.
During this era, LBJ and the Civil Rights Bill was the main aattraction. July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed a civil rights bill that prohibited discrimination in voting, education, employment, and other areas of the American life. At this point, the American life will be changed forever. LBJ had helped to weaken bills because he felt as if it was the states job and not the goverment, but why did he change his mind? Was polictics the reason LBJ signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964?
Although many laws were passed that recognized African Americans as equals, the liberties they had been promised were not being upheld. Hoffman, Blum, and Gjerde state that “Union League members in a North Carolina county, upon learning of three or four black men who ‘didn’t mean to vote,’ threatened to ‘whip them’ and ‘made them go.’ In another country, ‘some few colored men who declined voting’ were, in the words of a white conservative, ‘bitterly persecute[ed]” (22). Black codes were also made to control African Americans. Norton et al. states that “the new black codes compelled former slaves to carry passes, observe a curfew, live in housing provided by a landowner, and give up hope of entering many desirable occupations” (476). The discrimination and violence towards African Americans during this era and the laws passed that were not being enforced were very disgraceful. However, Reconstruction was a huge stepping stone for the way our nation is shaped today. It wasn’t pretty but it was the step our nation needed to take. We now live in a country where no matter the race, everyone is considered equal. Reconstruction was a success. Without it, who knows where our nation would be today. African American may have never gained the freedoms they have today without the
The case started with a third-grader named Linda Brown. She was a black girl who lived just seen blocks away from an elementary school for white children. Despite living so close to that particular school, Linda had to walk more than a mile, and through a dangerous railroad switchyard, to get to the black elementary school in which she was enrolled. Oliver Brown, Linda's father tried to get Linda switched to the white school, but the principal of that school refuse to enroll her. After being told that his daughter could not attend the school that was closer to their home and that would be safer for Linda to get to and from, Mr. Brown went to the NAACP for help, and as it turned out, the NAACP had been looking for a case with strong enough merits that it could challenge the issue of segregation in pubic schools. The NAACP found other parents to join the suit and it then filed an injunction seeking to end segregation in the public schools in Kansas (Knappman, 1994, pg 466).
The case of brown v. board of education was one of the biggest turning points for African Americans to becoming accepted into white society at the time. Brown vs. Board of education to this day remains one of, if not the most important cases that African Americans have brought to the surface for the better of the United States. Brown v. Board of Education was not simply about children and education (Silent Covenants pg 11); it was about being equal in a society that claims African Americans were treated equal, when in fact they were definitely not. This case was the starting point for many Americans to realize that separate but equal did not work. The separate but equal label did not make sense either, the circumstances were clearly not separate but equal. Brown v. Board of Education brought this out, this case was the reason that blacks and whites no longer have separate restrooms and water fountains, this was the case that truly destroyed the saying separate but equal, Brown vs. Board of education truly made everyone equal.
On the seventeenth day in May 1954 a decision was made which changed things in the United States dramatically. For millions of black Americans, news of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education meant, at last, that they and their children no longer had to attend separate schools. Brown v. Board of Education was a Supreme Court ruling that changed the life of every American forever.
To wrap it up, African Americans lived an unfair past in the south, such as Alabama, during the 1930s because of discrimination and the misleading thoughts towards them. The Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow Laws and the way they were generally treated in southern states all exemplify this merciless time period of the behavior towards them. They were not given the same respect, impression, and prospect as the rest of the citizens of America, and instead they were tortured. Therefore, one group should be never singled out and should be given the same first intuition as the rest of the people, and should never be judged by color, but instead by character.
Many people didn’t want the Civil Rights Act to become official, but in the end there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. “We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colors and all cultures are distinct and individual.” That is an amazing quote by C. JoyBell C., which I believe summarizes the main focus of the Civil Rights Act conflicts. Many people just take one look at the skin and think they know exactly what’s underneath. When in reality that doesn’t define a person at all, actions do.
The Transformation of the American Society was drastically effected by the Civil Rights movement and the antiwar movements that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. These movements gained momentum quickly as public sentiment saw the everlasting war in Vietnam and the domestic violence within the country as unneccessary.
In the Autobiography, “Narrative Life of Fredrick Douglas: An American Slave,” Fredrick Douglas writes to show what the life of a slave is like, because from personal experience, he knows. Fredrick Douglas not only shows how his life has been as a slave but shows what it is like to be on the bottom and be mistreated. Douglas shows that freedom isn’t free, and he took the initiative to become a free man. Not many African-Americans had the opportunity to make themselves free and were forced to live a life of disparity and torture. Through his experience Douglas shows us the psychological effects of slavery. Through Douglas’s memory we are able to relive the moments that continued to haunt his life. Douglas’s book showed the true
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more, if only they had known they were slaves.” Harriet Tubman was a woman known for her important role during the time that led up to the Civil War. She was a woman of incredible strength, courage, and determination. And while Harriet Tubman is credited for giving the slaves an option as to what way they shall spend the rest of their life, the sad truth lies within the quote above. While many people like to believe that slavery was a horrendous act that happened only with small minded people from the south many years ago, that isn’t the case in all honesty. In fact, the idea of slavery was highly debated about and troubled more minds than many are led to believe. While there are
The United States government should pass an Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee equality for both men and women.
The Civil Rights era was a very heartbreaking time during Americas’ dark past. Race was a major topic talked about in the 1960’s. Everyone knew it was there and happening but didn’t really want to talk about it. They just pushed it to the back of their minds. Black individuals like Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks had been taken to jail for only protesting peacefully. They didn’t do anything wrong but during this time period; white authority didn’t really like what they were doing. Persistent and patriotic Lyndon B. Johnson directly speaks to the members of Congress to motivate them to pass a bill, but is also speaking to every American and every person in the whole world, in order to hopefully make African
American Civil Rights Movement By Eric Eckhart The American Civil Rights movement was a movement in which African Americans were once slaves and over many generations fought in nonviolent means such as protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and many other forms of civil disobedience in order to receive equal rights as whites in society. The American civil rights movement never really had either a starting or a stopping date in history. However, these African American citizens had remarkable courage to never stop, until these un-just laws were changed and they received what they had been fighting for all along, their inalienable rights as human beings and to be equal to all other human beings. Up until this very day there are still racial issues where some people feel supreme over other people due to race.
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations and private individuals, and which ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the society and state without discrimination or repression.