Minorities In The Civil Rights Movement

Robert F. Kennedy, the sixty-fourth United States Attorney General, once said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope” ("16 Inspiring Quotes”). A civil rights movement is individuals striking out against injustice and giving hope to a nation. The famous civil rights movements of the 1960s and the 2010s share comparable events that began their respected movements. The principle of the 1960’s and 2010’s civil rights movement were similar; both movements wished to achieve racial equality.
The 1960’s civil rights movement started through various acts of unjustified acts of racism. After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Brown

VS. Board of Education of Topeka that “separate but equal” was discriminatory on May 17, 1954, acts of racism became more frequent. The event that increased involvement among students during the civil rights movement was the murdering of Emmett Till. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black male, was visiting family in Money, Mississippi, when he was murdered for flirting with a white woman. Till was kidnapped by the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and forced to carry a seventy-five-pound cotton-gin fan to the Tallahatchie River. At the river, Bryant and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, beat Till until his body was not recognizable, gouged his eye out, shot him in the head, tied him to the cotton-gin fan, and threw him into the river. When the body was recovered, Milam and Bryant were put on trial at a segregated court house. Even with overwhelming evidence the two were guilty, they were found not guilty due the all-white jury believing the state did not prove the identity of the body ("The Death of Emmett Till").
The verdict of the Emmitt Till murder opened the eyes of many to the racism plaguing America during this time. This murder could have a correlation to the vast amount of students involved with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Till’s murder, being he was fourteen when he died, inspired many black youths to partake in the civil rights movement half a decade later. After his death, Till was taken to his home town of Chicago where his highly attended funeral occurred. Till’s mother chose to have an open casket to expose the brutality her son experienced (Capek and Steven). Emmett Till was a young black man whose murder would spark a movement, similar to Trayvon Martin’s death.
Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old black male who was brutally shot and murdered at Sanford, Florida, on July 13, 2013. Martin was killed on his return home from a 7-Eleven snack run. George Zimmerman saw the teenager and contacted authorities saying that he was following a suspicious man walking around with a hood; to this the dispatcher responded that was unneeded. Zimmerman did not listen to the dispatcher and followed Martin until the two were in a brawl. No witnesses came forward for what happened during the brawl, but it ended with a bullet in Martin’s chest (Botelho).
George Zimmerman was tried for Trayvon Martin’s murder and found not guilty in a highly-televised case. Similar to the Till case, Martin’s seemly unjustified murderer exposed racial tension in American society. Martin’s death inspired a new movement, the most prominent civil rights movement of the 2010’s: Black Lives Matter ("A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement"). Martin’s and Till’s case are similar in how they were both able to spark an entire movement for civil rights.
Another event inspiring the 1960’s civil rights movement was Rosa Parks’s refusal to obey a bus driver who commanded her to give her seat to a white man in 1955. The bus driver called authorities and had Parks arrested. She was fined ten dollars and had to spend a night in jail. Parks would eventually take her case to the United States Supreme Court, where it declared that segregation on public buses was against the law. Parks’s story influenced many to take a stand against the social injustices minorities faced during this time. African Americans boycotted city buses for the year of 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks would eventually become an icon for the civil rights movement and in 1996 received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (Edison). Parks’s had an undeniable impact on the 1960’s civil rights movement, similar to Eric Garner and the 2010’s civil rights movement.
Although there may not be a single event that influenced minorities in the 2010’s civil rights movement to the extreme of Rosa Parks, but Eric Garner’s experience with police brutality is analogous to Parks’s.

Eric Garner was a forty-three-year-old black man who was killed by New York Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo. Pantaleo had Garner in a chokehold and before Garner died, he screamed, “I can’t breathe.” Afterward, this was a commonly used chant for protestors. “I can’t breathe” was commonly wore by professional athletes in support of the civil rights movement. Garner’s death did not start the 2010’s civil rights movement, but it was an event that propelled it. Parks did not experience police brutality that would take her life, but her experience with racial injustice inspired a movement similar to Garner. Garner may not have had as much influence as Rosa did, but he still had a major impact on Black Lives Matter (“New York Mourns Eric

Garner”).
Although the events inspiring their respected civil rights movement are similar, many differences exist between them.

African Americans were severely segregated before the 1960’s civil rights movement, they were treated much worse than African Americans in the 2000s era. Racism was more relevant during the 1900s compared to the 2000s. During the 60’s civil rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan saw a surge in members. The KKK planned deliberate attacks on black activists, including bombings, shootings, and lynchings ("Ku Klux Klan"). The KKK, since the passing of the 60’s civil rights movement, has had a significant decrease in popularity. Bombings and lynchings are not common features of the civil rights movement in the 2010s. One should not disregard the 2010’s civil rights movement because the 60’s civil rights movement experienced more social injustice. The need for a movement may have been larger during the 60s, but social injustice should always be eradicated no matter the

need.
The principle of any civil rights movement usually is similar, but a strong similarity to events inspiring the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 2010s exists. Emmitt Till’s case exposed racial injustice in the United States, similar to how Trayvon Martin’s case did. Rosa Parks’s experience with law enforcement injustice caused racial tension similar to Eric Garner’s. Although differences existed between the racial tensions at the beginning of the two civil rights movements, the call to action against racial injustice was still necessary. Hope powers any civil rights movement; if it were not for the brave individuals who stood against social injustice then there would be no hope for the oppressed.