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Civil Rights Essay, Research Paper

Essay: Trace the development of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Explain why it became more radical and violent in the 1960s. What changes occurred in the motives, assumptions, and leadership of the movement?

The Civil Rights movement has been a debate that has plagued America since the its conception with slaves first appearing to the New World in 1619. The debate over the rights of slaves became even more explosive in the 1850s with the Civil War when America fought over the freedom of these slaves, and the eventually the slaves gained their constitutional guarantee to be free through the Thirteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment gave the Federal Government the right to protect the individual against the state which was supposed to help pave way for Civil Rights. Despite these massive changes in their lives, the slaves were not truly free. They now had to free themselves from the chains of segregation and oppression. Everywhere they would travel, they would be discriminated purely on the color of their skin. The Civil Rights movement gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s as blacks thirsted for equal rights and became more violent in the 1960s with such leaders as Malcolm X.

The combat against segregation became prevalent in 1896 when the Supreme Court made a monumental decision. They declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. They claimed that segregation was allowable as long as the facilities were separate but equal. However, in the 1940s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 by black radical and first black to graduate from Harvard with a PhD from Harvard W. E. B. DuBois, began to attack the principal of separate but equal. NAACP began suing colleges to gain entrance for black students into their colleges. In 1950, the Supreme Court made a significant step in favor of Civil Rights when the Supreme Court ruled in Sweatt vs. Painter and McLaurin vs. Oklahoma in which the Court ruled that segregation was illegal at the state college level. These decisions forbade the upcoming decision the Court would make in Brown v. Board of Education.

In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower made a significant move when he appointed Earl Warren as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The Warren Court would make some of the most liberal and significant actions in the course of American History. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court led by Earl Warren made a significant decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The court decided that the 1896 decision of Plessy vs. Ferguson, in which the Court ruled segregation was alright if the facility was separate but equal, was unconstitutional. They contended that separate but equal was inherently unequal. With this decision, the Court made it illegal to segregate public schools. Linda Brown was a black elementary school student who wished to enroll in an all-white school. Thurgood Marshall from the NAACP, who would later become a Supreme Court Justice, argued on the behalf of Brown. He claimed that segregation of public schools deprived black of an equal educational opportunity thus making their education unequal. The Supreme Court put to use the Fourteenth Amendment when the Court made its decision under the equal protection clause. One year later, the Supreme Court declared that the schools must be integrated with all deliberate speed. The Brown decision was one of the first movements toward desegregation. President Harry Truman s Executive Order 9981 ordered the desegregation of the military in 1948.

The Brown decision sparked much debate and violence around the issue of Civil Rights. The decision was perceived as a threat to state and local authorities as they felt that the Federal Government should not influence desegregation. Eisenhower even criticized his decision to appoint Warren as the Chief Justice calling it my biggest mistake. The Brown decision faced vehement opposition in the south as eighty percent of the southern whites opposed the decision. Southern whites refused to attend integrated schools, and the Ku Klux Klan reemerged in the South and would lead to another important decision known as the Emmett Till case. In fact, many states did all they could do to resist the desegregation of schools. Virginia passed in 1956 the massive resistance. The massive resistance declared that Virginia would cut off state funding to desegregated schools.

In 1957, Eisenhower made a significant move to help lead to desegregation of the schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School. Faubus blatantly defied the Supreme Court and ignored the Brown decision. Eisenhower sent one thousand federal troops in to protect and allow the students to attend the school. This was the first time a president had sent troops to the South to enforce the Constitution since Reconstruction.

The next battle waged on the issue of Civil Rights Movement began in Montgomery, Alabama, with a black seamstress named Rosa Parks. On December 11, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus because she was tired and did not want to move. Quickly after, Parks was arrested and fined fourteen dollars. Civil Rights activist seized upon the opportunity to begin a boycott against the Montgomery bus system. The leader of the boycott was a young pastor known as Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott gained national attention and sympathy as blacks carpooled, walked, or took black-owned taxi company to the places they needed to go to. The boycott eventually led to the near-bankruptcy of public transportation as eighty percent of the customers of the public transportation system. King s house during this time was bombed and he and eighty-eight other leaders of the boycott were fined one

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