The Sad History of Civil Rights for Black Americans

Freedom riders were a group of men and women young and old who boarded

buses and planes bound for the south. There main aim was the get rid

of the Jim Crow laws. They would ride through the towns sitting

wherever they liked regardless of their race (this was breaking the

law in Southern States) A few times, the freedom riders would be met

with no resistance, but more often angry racist mobs awaited their

arrival at the stations. As a non-violent group, the freedom riders

would not fight back to the abuse they received.

The Second World War helped develop the Civil Right movement due to

the fact that it brought Blacks together with Whites. During the

Second World War Blacks where able to fly planes, Roosevelt set up the

FEPC. This meant that discrimination against Black Americans was ended

in government agencies. Things like this helped the Civil Rights

Movement as Blacks felt they should get the same treatment in other

aspects of life. Black Americans fought not only for America, but for

their human rights back home, this was called the Double V campaign.

After the war, Black Protests started to happen all over the country

(Brown v Topeka, Montgomery Bus Boycott) sparking the real start of

the Civil Rights movement.

During the 50’s and 60’s one man helped improve the treatment of Black

Americans using no violence whatsoever. Martin Luther King believed in

non-violence, he said that this was not cowardly but that it was a

method that did resist. King set up various sit-ins in and around

southern states such as Georgia and Atlanta. King also encouraged

boycotts, one of the most publicized being the Montgomery Bus Boycott

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time to stand up for themselves and fight back. Many Blacks were

impatient with Kings approach. They preferred Malcolm X's more

militant stance and their anger and frustration caused a split in the

movement. Things came to a head in an area of Los Angeles called Watts.

With the split causing an even bigger divide in USA, many protests

ended in sheer violence, raising questions of Malcolm X’s beliefs.

Eventually the movement came to an abrupt halt as Malcolm X was

assassinated in February 1965, and then the peace protest collapsed as

Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis on the 4th of April 1968.

So America had come along way since the start of the Civil Rights

movement in 1954. From Little Rock High school to the Protests in

Birmingham the United States had had, and still has a very difficult

race division.