King’s letter from a Birmingham prison was not just written randomly. Dr King wrote it after he caught wind that eight clergymen wrote a public statement asking that black citizens of the south cease demonstrating and rallying to stop oppression. They suggested instead that white and black citizens of Alabama come together and peacefully negotiate on what to do to improve the problem. King had a problem with this. He recalled a while before that letter when negotiation did occur to stop racial issues and none of what was negotiated stuck.
In example, the CCC creates separated camps between blacks and whites or the NRA was tolerating that blacks received less money than whites for the same jobs. Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins were enforcing racial justice, the president created the “Black cabinet” offering position to numbers of blacks into his administration. African-Americans were employed in the New Deal agencies and more were appointed to jobs with the federal government than ever before. But most important problems were not solved. For instance “In Atlanta, Georgia, a Klan-like group called the Black Shirts paraded carrying signs that read, "No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job"(Jim Crow).
The Constitution, until recently, did not apply to blacks; blacks feel they deserve payments from 310 years of slavery, destruction to their minds and culture. Dr. Martin Luther King's dilemma in the United States was of a different kind. He was torn between his identity as a Black man of African descent and his identity as an American. He urged Americans to judge based on the content of the character not by skin color and also believed in non-violent protests. Martin Luther King Jr’s main perspective during the fight on racism was equality.
The idea of using non-violence as a technique in the civil rights movement was the idea of Martin Luther King which branched from Ghandi’s belief of non-violence from the time he spent in India and his own Christian beliefs. A range of non-violent methods were used by the protestors. In 1955, the Montgomery Busy Boycott was the biggest protest to date and was the first major time that so many people had come together to overturn the Jim Crow laws. The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of non-violent protests in 1960 which led to the Woolworths department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in southern US as well as segregation in public areas being largely abandoned in Florida, Texas etc. The freedom rides were when civil rights activists rode interstate buses into the southern US in 1961 to test the supreme courts decision of ruling segregation on interstate transport illegal.
In 1951, the father of a black student named Linda Brown sued the Board of Education because a white school had prevented Brown from attending a school which was only seven blocks away, compared to the segregated black school she was attending which was more than seven blocks away from her home. Despite losing the first legal battle, Brown’s father did not give up. He found help from the NAACP, a prominent civil rights organisation which appealed on his behalf to the Supreme Court of USA. Following the appeal, in May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared the US Constitution to be ‘colour-blind’ and therefore ordered the Topeka Board of education to end segregation in its schools. This was one of the first major steps in the civil rights movement.
• Southern school for blacks were poor standards which resulted in black people not being educated enough to vote or work for a living. • Southerners and northerners refused to work alongside one another due to the stress and havoc of the Civil War • The plantation southern belle’s morals and beliefs had all changed so the social class fell. • Racism continued to increase in the southern rather than decrease causing backlash amongst the black citizens. • Black people began to blend in with social classes as they were not trapped anymore and were ‘free’. • Even though slavery was illegal, sly and unofficial slavery took place in order for black people to survive and live in both the south and north of America.
How important was the Montgomery bus boycott in changing the civil rights of African-Americans? The Montgomery bus boycott was an event that started in the, 1st, December 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in a segregated bus to a white man, leading to the Montgomery bus boycott to occur. I think this event was the most important in changing the civil rights of African-Americans. However, other event like ‘little rock’ and the ‘sit-ins’ were also very important events in changing civil rights. I believe the Montgomery bus boycott was the most important event in the 1950s -1960s in changing the civil rights for African-Americans, because this event gained internationally attention.
The U.S Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system. As of 21st December 1956, black people rode the bus again. However, the ruling was unpopular with many white people in Montgomery and elsewhere. One of the leaders of the boycott, a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), emerged as a prominent leader of the American civil rights movement in the wake of the action. Using the Law In 1947, President Truman told the Committee on Civil Rights that it was time to make sure civil rights laws were enforced.
President Roosevelt, former governor of New York, did not believe in racial segregation of African-Americans and when African-Americans were hired to drive buses in Philadelphia during the war, some residents refused to ride the buses others threatened to burn the buses. Roosevelt sent troops to ride on the buses, eventually everyone realized that you need to catch the bus or else you would end up walking a long way so it was change even though it wasn’t much. No black pilots had ever been used before by the United States, one of the reasons is since in order to become a pilot, blacks had to achieve high-test scores and be college educated. However, in 1944 President Eisenhower supported integrated combat units and the air force began to let black Americans fly planes and even though they were only allowed to fly in segregated units it was a turning point. Overall, the Second World War was a turning point in the growth of the civil Rights of black Americans as it was a catalyst for change as it made black Americans more politically aware and feel that they had the right to demand change.
“The forgotten Man”, the famous speech by William Graham Sumner, points his idea about the social problems in late nineteenth century and early twenties. In his point of view, if A and B came up with an idea to force C to do something to help D who is suffering from some problems, C would be the forgotten man. Sumner’s idea, to some extent, supports Jim Crow Law. During the reconstructive, the society didn’t reach the point of equality of the two races, instead it became even worse in many places all over the country. The Civil War only ended the slavery, not racism.