Civil Rights

African Americans were considered to be unworthy to be associated with whites, they struggled to fight laws of segregation for years and years to finally be thought of as equals. They fought to earn their civil rights which is were the movement got its name from. There are many names that stand out when you think of the Civil Rights Movement, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. who lead a march to Washington and gave the famous “I have a Dream” speech, and there is also Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of the bus and render her seat to a white person. They are all interconnected in one way or another, with each of their actions and teachings influencing each other, and finally after a great deal of years they reached equality and desegregation.

For one woman her act of defiance against the oppression of segregations was in the form of refusing her spot on the bus and not following the rules of segregation in the bus system by sitting in the back. The day was the first of December 1955 and Mrs. Rosa Parks was on her way home after preparing a seminar for the NAACP. Along with everything else the bus system was segregated as well, whites in the front and blacks in the back and if a white person wanted a seat a black person had to give theirs up. She sat in the front row in the back of the bus for the blacks and when more people got on the bus she along with other African Americans were told to move back, but she didn’t. The bus driver was forced to call the police and when they arrived she was hauled of to jail like a criminal. The day of her trial, December 5th 1955, the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) started a boycott against the bus system which lasted a year and because of her actions buses were no longer to be segregated as of November 13, 1956 after the Supreme Court ruled it to be unconstitutional. After her decision to refuse her seat and the actions done by the local police and the ruling of the Supreme Court the Civil Rights Movement picked up some much needed momentum.

Martin Luther King Jr. entered the Civil Rights Movement when he was asking to lead the MIA which was set up by other ministers because the NAACP was weak in Alabama. He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was arrested many times, but he never stopped to push on and the law was finally passed that segregation on the buses was unconstitutional. He later, along with other African American leaders, joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight against the oppression of the Jim Crow Laws. It was in 1963 when he led the march to Birmingham, Alabama and was met by local police who administered a great deal of violence. Martin Luther King Jr. urged his followers to met their violence with non-violence and his non-violent tactics is what helped lead to the end of the Jim Crow Laws which allowed African Americans to have equal rights as the white citizens in the state of Alabama. Also in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. along with 200,000 blacks and whites started a march to Washington for jobs and freedom. It was there in Washington were he gave his “I have a Dream” speech which influenced the United States populations view on segregation and for his speech he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and