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Essay history grade 12 Civil rights movements in
History grade 12 civil rights movement
Civil rights movement in the usa
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Formal organizations have different strategies to govern, regulate, or effect social change. Each organization has a tactic the actors use to accomplish goals and objectives. The organization’s strategies are very important in whether organizations are able to successfully fulfill conception of social good. In class, we began talking heavily on the Civil Rights Movement. During the Civil Rights Movement many different organizations were pushing for racial equality and justice amongst the African American population. There were several different organization that had their own strategies and tactics to accomplish their own set objectives. Each organizations tactics to accomplish their goals were met in meaningful and coordinated ways. The Student …show more content…
In the documentary we watched in class, called Eyes on the Prize, we witnessed the preparation before each student went through before they were able to participate in the sit-ins. The documentary revealed the violent tactics of some folks displayed in result of the protestors. The protestors faced brutal beatings, and after the violence they faced, the protestors were the ones that were taken to jail (Eyes on the Prize). Each student needed to be well prepared for the sit-ins because their patience was going to be tested. The training was just a small dose of what may happen at the restaurants, but anything could have been expected. The training allows the students to be somewhat prepared for violent reactions, and this is essential in order to keep the movement nonviolent. The SNCC discussed “nonviolence and direct action…in an organizational context of skilled strategists,” and activist began training students in sit-in techniques (Polletta). The world was against the protestors, and the public could have reacted in anyway, so in order to be ready for anything that may have been thrown their way. The students could not just walk into a restaurant and sit at the lunch counter, because they needed to be prepared, in order for there to be synchronization between the entire group. Also the SNCC was …show more content…
The determination, blood, and sweat of the students who participated in the sit-ins paid off at the end, because of how well the group was organized and structured. The sit-ins spread across the South quickly, because the activist, although they were college students, worked “through local movement centers, planned, coordinated, and sustained them” (Polletta). The college students were able to keep their organization well coordinated and this helped the movement prosper, because there was a method of doing things that worked. If the SNCC was not as organized and structured, the movement may have not been so impactful, because an organization cannot spread and gain attention if it has poor communication and coordination skills. There needed to be a strong backing in order to join such a group, because it was a risk to join at the time. The organized and structure of the SNCC and the sit-in movement allowed them to have backing from leading political figures. “John F. Kennedy gave his breakthrough civil rights address in June 1963, in which he declared civil rights as a moral issue,” he said that it is a right for facilities to serve and open to the public. He compared this to education and voting (Schmidt). The organization was successful enough to catch the eye of a presidential candidate, this could not be done if the organizational structure was unorganized and unstructured. This shows
Additionally, a social movement’s ideology or their “belief-disbelief system” is “fluid” and open to change, unlike a small collective with a rigid set of principles. The main principle of acquiring justice is consistent, but beliefs are subject to change. The Civil Rights Movement is a textbook example of a “fluid” movement, consisting of swaying beliefs and strategies to combat racial injustice. The original strategy of the movement was to simply shame America through boycotting and the exposure of injustice, but the movement soon realized this strategy was not enough.
Everyone that has been through the American school system within the past 20 years knows exactly who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is, and exactly what he did to help shape the United States to what it is today. In the beginning of the book, Martin Luther King Jr. Apostle of Militant Nonviolence, by James A. Colaiaco, he states that “this book is not a biography of King, [but] a study of King’s contribution to the black freedom struggle through an analysis and assessment of his nonviolent protest campaigns” (2). Colaiaco discusses the successful protests, rallies, and marches that King put together. . Many students generally only learn of Dr. King’s success, and rarely ever of his failures, but Colaiaco shows of the failures of Dr. King once he started moving farther North.
One of the first documented incidents of the sit-ins for the civil rights movement was on February 1, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. Four college African-Americans sat at a lunch counter and refused to leave. During this time, blacks were not allowed to sit at certain lunch counters that were reserved for white people. These black students sat at a white lunch counter and refused to leave. This sit-in was a direct challenge to southern tradition. Trained in non-violence, the students refused to fight back and later were arrested by Nashville police. The students were drawn to activist Jim Lossen and his workshops of non-violence. The non-violent workshops were training on how to practice non-violent protests. John Lewis, Angela Butler, and Diane Nash led students to the first lunch counter sit-in. Diane Nash said, "We were scared to death because we didn't know what was going to happen." For two weeks there were no incidences with violence. This all changed on February 27, 1960, when white people started to beat the students. Nashville police did nothing to protect the black students. The students remained true to their training in non-violence and refused to fight back. When the police vans arrived, more than eighty demonstrators were arrested and summarily charged for disorderly conduct. The demonstrators knew they would be arrested. So, they planned that as soon as the first wave of demonstrators was arrested, a second wave of demonstrators would take their place. If and when the second wave of demonstrators were arrested and removed, a third would take their place. The students planned for multiple waves of demonstrators.
Civil disobedience was key in the pursuit of equality for African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement. Through forms of peaceful protest, African Americans were able to bring to light the socio-economic inequalities they faced and forced the government and general public to do something about it. Sit-ins, one method of practicing civil disobedience, took root in the early 1960s and quickly became a popular and effective form of peaceful protest. James Baldwin makes a very brief note of sit-ins in his essay “Down at the Cross”. Its brief mention is probably due to the time at which the essay was written, just before sit-ins became a national phenomenon. At first glance, one may think that Baldwin doesn‘t think much change will happen from the sit-in movement. However, the urgency to take immediate action as described in his essay hints toward sit-ins as being a possible solution to ending discrimination in public spaces.
During this decade, the Civil Rights movement continued to gain momentum. The black community was continually persecuted and discriminated against by prejudice white individuals and figures of authority. Blacks everywhere struggled to end discrimination. They demanded the right to vote, to receive quality education, and to become respected individuals in the community which shunned them. (Sitkoff 35) Students, in particular, played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960's. Many college students were outraged by social injustices and the intolerance shown by their universities. Many individuals participated in boycotts and sit-ins in an attempt to change their community for the better. (Blumberg 18) The young people during the 1960?s greatly influenced the course of the Civil Rights movement by their efforts and actions. Students played a large role in the desegregation of both public grade schools and universities. College students also formed and took part in new political groups such as the Black Panther Party and Students for a Democratic Society. (Blumberg 73) Because of their heavy political involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, students across the country created a new institution: the political university. (Curry 77)
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, was created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh in April 1960. SNCC was created after a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. SNCC coordinated these sit-ins across the nation, supported their leaders, and publicized their activities. SNCC sought to affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of their purpose. In the violently changing political climate of the 60’s, SNCC struggled to define its purpose as it fought white oppression. Out of SNCC came some of today's black leaders, such as former Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry, Congressman John Lewis and NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Together with hundreds of other students, they left a lasting impact on American history.
As Dr. King stated in Letter from A Birmingham Jail, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. I must confess that I am not afraid of the word, tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. The purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Such as in the case of the 1969 student site-in against the Vietnam W...
African Americans had been struggling to obtain equal rights for scores of decades. During the 1960’s, the civil rights movement intensified and the civil rights leaders entreated President Kennedy to intervene. They knew it would take extreme legislature to get results of any merit. Kennedy was afraid to move forward in the civil rights battle, so a young preacher named Martin Luther King began a campaign of nonviolent marches and sit-ins and pray-ins in Birmingham, Alabama to try and force a crisis that the President would have to acknowledge. Eventually things became heated and Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor released his men to attack the protesters, which included many schoolchildren. All of this was captured and televised to the horror of the world. Finally this forced the President into action and he proposed a bill outlawing segregation in public facilities. The bill became bogged down in Congress but civil righ...
Over 200,000 demonstrators participated in the March on Washington in the nation’s capital on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to gain civil rights for African Americans. There was a wide diversity in those who participated, with a quarter of all the demonstrators being white (Ross). Even southern people came to contribute which caused them to be harassed and threatened for coming to the march. The March on Washington became a very successful event for the rights of African Americans, and amended several peoples’ view-points towards the topic, even President John Kennedy’s. “The president feared that it might make the legislature vote against civil rights laws in reaction to a perceived threat. Once it became clear that the march would go on, however, he supported it” (Ross). The event took over a year to plan with heaps of organizations’ assistance. The event soon became the largest demonstration for human rights in Washington D.C. (Official Program). How did the March on Washington’s planning and set up help influence so many people and grant them the rights they fought for?
Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation was written, African Americans were still fighting for equal rights in every day life. The first real success of this movement did not come until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 which was followed by many boycotts and protests. The largest of these protests, the March on Washington, was held on August 28, 1963 “for jobs and freedom” (March on Washington 11). An incredible amount of preparation went into the event to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people attending from around the nation and to deal with any potential incidents.
From America's birth with the signing of the Declaration of Independence there have been few movements that have affected as many people as the Civil Rights movement. In a world where blacks were always seen as inferior, any other notion or conception of blacks was highly untolerated. Since Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves in 1886, there had been no discernable change in the state of racial affairs in America. Not until Brown v. Board of Education ruled that schools should be integrated was anything done for help the plights of blacks. Even after Brown, the South met the changes with fierce and violent resistance. When CORE started their freedom rides, the activists were brutally beaten time and again by Southern whites opposed to change in their way of life. For many whites these were welcome changes that finally address the issue of racism and civil rights for all, but for the large population in the South the government telling them what to do did not sit well at all. These feelings of unrest caused many reactions from whites and blacks alike, but for whites in America these changes would rest deeply for years to come.
They did not get their food that day, but they did not leave or go sit in the very back like they were asked to . Instead of leaving, they just sat there and wanted. They wanted so long that it was finally time for the restaurant to close. But this still did not stop them the next day when they came back again. This time something great happened instead of there just being four college kids who were African-American there were more. On February 5th 1960, there had been over 300 hundred students that had joined in this protest that also heard about the four college students and started to protest some of them even went out to different restaurants for sit-ins. By the end of March the movement had spread to 55 cities in 13 States. Even though a lot of them were arrested for trespassing this did not stop them at all. Even the national media covered the peaceful protest about the sit-ins. Finally, after many months the four college students finally succeed. July 1960, African Amercains were finally able to be served first. This shows a great way to peacefully protest because no one was being violent at
True civil disobedience shows respect for the law and accepts the consequences, but unfortunately there are many who hijack a justified movement and use it to satisfy their own selfish motives. In large crowd actions, like blockading roads and airports, or occupying reserved spaces, anarchists take the opportunity to fight law enforcement, vandalize property, and injure others, tarnishing the concept of civil disobedience. Rioters at the demonstrations at the University of Washington, Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and the University of California, Berkeley acted dangerously and gave the opponents of the original movements fuel in their arguments to condemn the movements. Civil disobedience seeks to bring together people for a common good, but can also cause social strife and division when criminal elements and other rioters conceal their behavior within the overall social movement and anonymity of crowds and engage in malicious
Historically, the Civil Rights Movement was a time during the 1950’s and 60’s to eliminate segregation and gain equal rights. Looking back on all the events, and dynamic figures it produced, this description is very vague. In order to fully understand the Civil Rights Movement, you have to go back to its origin. Most people believe that Rosa Parks began the whole civil rights movement. She did in fact propel the Civil Rights Movement to unprecedented heights but, its origin began in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was the cornerstone for change in American History as a whole. Even before our nation birthed the controversial ruling on May 17, 1954 that stated separate educational facilities were inherently unequal, there was Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 that argued by declaring that state laws establish separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. Some may argue that Plessy vs. Ferguson is in fact backdrop for the Civil Rights Movement, but I disagree. Plessy vs. Ferguson was ahead of it’s time so to speak. “Separate but equal” thinking remained the body of teachings in America until it was later reputed by Brown vs. Board of Education. In 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and prompted The Montgomery Bus Boycott led by one of the most pivotal leaders of the American Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. After the gruesome death of Emmett Till in 1955 in which the main suspects were acquitted of beating, shooting, and throwing the fourteen year old African American boy in the Tallahatchie River, for “whistling at a white woman”, this country was well overdo for change.