Civil Rights (choose from PDF)

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The Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement was a significant movement formed to fight for the rights of African Americans for equality, access to opportunities and an end to racial segregation. In the early 1960s, members and heads of the civil rights movement began to employ strategic non-violent tactics in their fight for equality. These tactics were mostly not violent and resulted in several achievements despite the fact that they were met with high resistance and sometimes violence. These achievements were mainly in legislative victories and judicial decisions against segregation and discrimination in access to public facilities and the right to vote.
The accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement came in the form of legislations which redefined the future of minorities such as the African Americans in the United States. Some of these legislations included The Civil Rights Act of 1964. This piece of legislation replaced legislation of the Civil rights Act of 1875 and that of 1957 which were ineffective. The 1964 legislation effectively ended all forms of discrimination based on gender, race or religion. This was presidents J.F .Kennedy’s bill and on his assassination it seemed that its passing had stalled. J.F Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson a masterful politician championed the bill and signed it into law in June 1964. President Johnson also formed a commission for equal employment opportunities. This legislation was a landmark event to the movements’ legacy.

In order to help create equality in education and availability of employment, the government started to encourage affirmative action to increase the enrollment and recruitment of groups that had been discriminated against.
After the 1964 legislation, the civil rights movement shifted goals and began to focus on voting rights. In 1965, many civil rights activists were attacked in retaliation to their ambition of having equal rights to vote for all Americans. Acts of violence were reported as people marched in solidarity from Selma to Montgomery in their quest to achieve voting reforms. In August of 1965, Congress enacted the Voting Rights act. This was a significant event to the movement. The law led to the elimination of disqualifying factors that barred African Americans participating in voting such the literacy tests that were done in the South. The enactment of this legislation to law encouraged the advocates to these reforms such as President Johnson to seriously consider other issues of great importance such as those of inequalities in social and economic circumstances. In 1968, another legislation the Civil Rights Act of 1968, was enacted to complement the existing laws. This law made illegal discrimination based on race, religion and gender on all persons seeking to finance, rent or even buy accommodation. It ended discrimination in housing.
Another win for the movement came in 1967 when the Supreme Court of the United States decided to overrule some state laws that made interracial marriages illegal. This led to a change in perspective of race relations. That year a film by Columbia pictures was released whose theme was the romance between the daughter of a white couple and an African American doctor.
Political and civic gains were made by African Americans and by the end of 1970, it is estimated that about 67% of eligible African American voters had been registered as voters. The number of African American elected officials also increased significantly. Reports indicate that these figures grew from just less than a hundred in 1965 to more than seven thousand by 1992. Although most of the white population in the United States had accepted that the ideology of equality in legal and political rights, they were hesitant and slower to agree with the same on economic and social equality. Therefore segregated communities continued to exist in the American cities and African Americans continued to experience discrimination.
The civil rights movement enjoyed many achievements but also faced setbacks in achieving its aims and goals. Violence was a major setback for the movement. The movements’ demonstrators were met with resistance as was the case in the Martin Luther King Jr, protests of 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. Demonstrators were blasted with high-pressure water, and vicious dogs unleashed to attack them. These were very bloody confrontations resulting in injuries and sometimes death. Another violent event occurred March 1965, a planned march from Selma to Montgomery ended shortly after it had begun just outside of Selma. Police mounted a blockade and using teargas and clubs they attacked and dispersed the protesters. A Northern minister of white origin, Reverend James Reeb’s was killed for participating in the demonstrations.
Divisions in the Civil Rights Movement began to emerge in 1965, as the movement was getting more fragmented. It became less committed to not using violence, and its interracial outlook dwindled. New leaders emerged as the movement turned its attention to the plight of African Americans who did not face legal segregation but a deeply rooted racial injustice. Acts of violence that broke out such as looting and destruction of property in the Watts, Los Angeles which was an African American neighborhood took back the gains the movement had made of the use of peaceful ways to protest. New groups emerged such as the Black Panthers, who decided to adopt military-style outlooks, alarmed many people. This led to a steady decline in the movements’ strict adherence to the rules for not using violence. This dealt the Civil Rights Movement a big blow as most financiers abandoned the course and their financial resources dried up leading to an almost end in its operations.
The aftermath of the Vietnam War damaged President Johnson’s coalition unity which had enabled him to secure victories in legislations such as those of federal aid to public education and that of Medicare. Conservatives became increasingly powerful after the war which proved a huge setback for the movement.
Martin Luther King Jr, motivated and inspired many initiatives and showed leadership for the movement in many events, however, he was never able to unite all the movements’ activists under one course behind his vision of nonviolence. Martin Luther’s became less influential as younger and more aggressive members, and supporters of the movement started to question the efficiency of the peaceful protests way.
Government’s suppression of the movement, and internal squabbling within the movement caused a decline in the Civil Rights movement activities. Assassinations of Luther and Malcolm X were significant events that reshaped the movement.
The Civil Rights movement produced changes in the lives of African Americans, as they were able to have the power to determine political change through voting. Significant civil rights gains were made by the movement in the 1960s. Despite this fact, racial suppression and discrimination continue to exist in the United States. Although desegregation of schools began as early as the 1970s, gains made in this sector have reduced as gaps in the test scores of African-American students and their white counterparts seem to be widening as well as the dropout rates of these students from high school. Poverty is higher among African Americans as well as the rates of unemployment. African American arrests and cases of police brutality towards them and their imprisonment is quite much greater than those of white men. In the 1960s leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr had dreamt of an America that after having accomplished legal reforms on equality would now face the difficult part of addressing the troubling issues of economic and social inequalities that are still in existence. This vision although seeming out of reach is still achievable.