The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Oana Grigorut

April 29, 2010

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a movement that referred to outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring Suffrage in the Southern states. The African American Civil RIghts movement occurred from 1955-1968. African Americans in the United States at this time did not have the same rights as their White American counterparts. African Americans deeply wanted to peruse their individual freedoms and try to live life to their fullest. Many affluent African Americans contributed their time and money into trying to outlaw segregation which was deemed unconstitutional.

Some famous African Americans from that era included W.E.B Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. W.E. B. Du Bois was an American civil rights activist. W. E B. Du Bois attempted almost every possible solution to the problem of t racism. Du Bois was a leader and political activist on behalf of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an also a prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist. On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Malcolm X was an African American Muslim human rights activist. He was know as an advocate for the rights of African Americans.

The 1954 United States Supreme Court decision was a significant turning point in the development of our country. It did not allow the legal basis for racial segregation in schools and other public facilities. The Montgomery bus boycott was a year long protest in Alabama. The Supreme Court called it unconstitutional to have segregated seating in buses. In December 1955, 42,000 black residents of Montgomery began a year-long boycott of city buses to protest racially segregated seating. After 381 days of taking taxis, carpooling, and walking the hostile streets of Montgomery, African Americans eventually won their fight to desegregate seating on public buses, not only in Montgomery, but throughout the United States. During the Freedom Rides, SNCC members rode buses through the deep southern states where discrimination and segregation were most likely. Freedom rides took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington DC on two public buses bound for the deep south. They wanted to test the Supreme Courts ruling of Boynton vs. Virginia , which declared segregation on intercity buses and railroads.

The ultimate outcome of the Civil Rights