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Civil Rights movement in the USA
Grade 12 history essay civil rights movement
Civil Rights movement in the USA
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Marching for Freedom On a grey Sunday morning in March of 1965, Alabama State Troopers at the orders of Governor George Wallace advanced on a group of African-Americans leading a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Using bull-whips, Billy clubs and tear gas, the armed troopers made short work of the defenseless protestors, injuring 57 of them while enforcing the strict segregation of the South. The march which was supposed to start in Selma and end at the state capitol in Montgomery was organized by voting rights leaders after a civil rights activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson, had been killed during a protest. Those who organized the march included chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) John Lewis and Hosea William, an assistant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Voting rights campaign led by the SNCC had targeted Selma because it had one of the lowest ratios of African-American voters to white voters. Out of an eligible 15,000 Selmans, only 200 were registered to vote. The SNCC worked on cracking literacy tests, protesting poll taxes and staging sit-ins at registration centers in order to get blacks registered to vote. White responses a protest led by the SNCC caused the death of SNCC activist Jimmie Lee Jackson and in turn sparked the call for a protest march to Montgomery. After the first march brutally ended on “Bloody Sunday” as it came to be known, a second march was planned which would be co-led by the SNCC and Martin Luther King’s SCLC. A federal injunction allowed the march to take place without interference from the Alabama government. Between March 19th and March 23rd, 1965, thousands of voting rights activists both black and white marched the fifty miles fr... ... middle of paper ... ...king with the wind: a memoir of the movement. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Nasstrom, Kathryn L. Rev. of Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, by John Lewis and Michael D'Orso. The Journal of American History 86 (1999). Reed, Roy. “25,000 go to Alabama’s Capitol; Wallace Rebuffs Petitioners; White Rights Worker is Slain.” New York Times 25 March 1965, pp. 1, 22. Reed, Roy. “Alabama Marchers Reach Outskirts of Montgomery.” New York Times 24 March 1965, pp. 1, 27. Reed, Roy. “Alabama Police use Gas and Clubs to Rout Negroes.” New York Times 7 March 1965, pp. 1, 20. Reed, Roy. “’Bloody Sunday’ Was Year Ago; Now Selma Negroes Are Hopeful.” New York Times 5 March 1965. Reed, Roy. “Selma Arrests 350, Mostly White Visitors, Near Mayor’s Home.” New York Times 19 March 1965. Stone, Chuck. “Selma to Montgomery.” National Geographic Feb 2000: 98-108
Here, though, the focus is primarily on the Committee’s voter registration initiative starting in 1964. This documentary provides a more historical perspective, and offers glimpses into the strategies used in Selma, Alabama to obtain social change. It shows how those within the group questioned the effectiveness of the protests and the march, and
Clark, Micheal. "Rise in Racial Extremism Worries Harlem Leaders." New York Times 25 Jan. 1960: 1+.
Kellogg, Charles Flint. NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1967.
Recently you have received a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In Dr. King’s letter he illustrates the motives and reasoning for the extremist action of the Civil Rights movement throughout the 1960’s. In the course of Dr. King’s letter to you, he uses rhetorical questioning and logistical reasoning, imagery and metaphors, and many other rhetorical devices to broaden your perspectives. I am writing this analysis in hopes you might reconsider the current stance you have taken up regarding the issues at hand.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett is an investigative journalist who wrote in honesty and bluntness about the tragedies and continued struggles of the Negro man. She was still very much involved with the issue even after being granted freedom and the right to vote. Statistics have shown that death and disparity continued to befall the Negro people in the South where the white man was “educated so long in that school of practice” (Pg. 677 Par. 2). Yet in all the countless murders of Negroes by the white man only three had been convicted. The white man of the South, although opposed to the freedom of Negroes would eventually have to face the fact of the changing times. However, they took every opportunity and excuse to justify their continued horrors. There were three main excuses that the white man of the South came up w...
Marable, Manning. Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
Finally understanding the breadth of the black’s commitment to their cause, supporters of segregation began to feel threatened by the boycotters. Because of African Americans’ long-standing status as “property” and the widely held belief that they are inferior, the white Southerner’s unyielding faith in his ability to control blacks had never before seen such a threat. A rally meant to prevent integration held by the Central Alabama Citizens Council in February 1956 introduced a handbill modeled after the Declaration of Independence and portrayed African Americans as animalistic savages that would bring about the end of civilization. The author contorts the opening words of the Declaration in an attempt to deem whites the “original” Americans with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers”. This handbill attempted to negate the raised spirits of the African Americans and return the power to the hands of white extremists by threatening to “abolish the Negro race” by use of “guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives” (Handbill).
Sokol, Jason. "IIP Digital | U.S. Department of State." White Southerners' Reactions to the Civil Rights
1. Sandburg, Carl. A. The Chicago Race Riots. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969. The “Riot Sweeps Chicago.”
Lawson, Steven F., and Charles M. Payne. "This Transformation of People": An Interview with Bob Moses. Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 170-188. Print.
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.
Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the active attempts of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register the Black voters of Alabama no significant progress was made . One such place was Selma Alabama. This small southern town of 29,000 soon became the focal point of the Civil Rights movement. Of the 15,156 blacks in Dallas County, Alabama only 156 were registered to vote. On January 2, 1965 Reverend King visited Selma and gave a fiery speech in it he stated: "Today marks the beginning of a determined organized, mobilized campaign to get the right to vote everywhere in Alabama."
Shaskolsky, Leon. “The Negro Protest Movement- Revolt or Reform?.” Phylon 29 (1963): 156-166. JSTOR. U of Illinois Lib., Urbana. 11 Apr. 2004 .
Chafe, William, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad. Remembering Jim Crow. New York: The New Press, 2001.
Wallace, George. “Excerpts from Wallace’s Speech on the Alabama Rights Movement March.” New York Times. 19 Mar. 1965: 20