Segregation In The Civil Rights Movement

My husband, child, and I had moved to South Carolina In 1957. I divorced my racist husband after realizing that I wanted to be engaged in the Civil Rights Movement. I could not deal with the segregation in the South any longer. Even though the Civil War had officially abolished slavery in 1866, it didn’t end the heartless discrimination against blacks because they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism directly or indirectly, on a daily basis. My two friends and I worked very hard to fight the Jim Crow Laws since they enforced racial segregation. We participated in non-violent protests throughout the South. We believed it was an executed social system devised by the ruling class, which it was. My daughter’s school in South Carolina

was extremely segregated. I had no money and no power since Scott was the only one working at the time. He made most of our family’s decisions and I could not deal with it any longer. I divorced him in 1964 and became an independent women who strived to address and overcome the issues of segregation.

I remember being so happy after hearing about the mass imprisonment of Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi because they were protesting what they believed in. They did this by boarding buses to rout out segregation in seating in violation of the Supreme Court order. On November 5th of 1968 I voted in the presidential election along with blacks because it was the first election after the Voting Rights Act passed! The government in the South tried many sneaky ways to prevent blacks from voting, through Jim Crow Laws. Even though blacks have been legally allowed to vote since the 15th amendment, it was not until one hundred years after that the Voting Rights Act was passed. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 along with the Voting Rights Act which passed in 1965. The Civil Rights Act helped humans of different races, colors, religions, sexes, and National origins to not be discriminated against. The Voting Rights Act was the beginning of the efforts to break the grip of state disenfranchisement. The Voting Rights Act abolished things like the poll tax, in order to be more fair when it came to blacks

voting. There were so many young students who took after these rights movements and used the same tactics as black people were using in the Civil Rights Movement, and this was known as “The New Left”. These students made their own impactful sit-ins at Universities like Columbia (1968) and Harvard. Students were rebelling in ways that they hadn’t in previous decades and campuses were becoming centers of social activism where students could protests issues without consequences. It was crucial that these future generations made their voices heard. Groups of students fled the president's office, during LBJ and Richard Nixon’s presidency, in order to protest the Vietnam War. They made it very clear that there needed to be a change. Along with all these protest, women were also using their voices to stand up for their own rights. My friends and I would protest for equal paying jobs and more job opportunities in general. These movements showed the powerful role us women played in this society and it was eye opening to those who doubted us. My friends lead local civil rights organizations and one was a lawyer on a school segregation lawsuit. With all of these changes happening, the 1960s was named the “Tumultuous Decade.”