Black Americans in the United States fought for equal legal protections throughout the civil rights movement, primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, black people continued to suffer the terrible consequences of racism, particularly in the South, even after the Civil War formally ended slavery. As a result, African Americans experienced too much racism and violence by the middle of the 20th century. Nevertheless, they mobilized and started an unparalleled campaign for equality that lasted two decades, along with many white people, which we read in several books about the civil rights movement.
The Civil Rights Movement’s Emergence
In the 20th century, the Civil Rights Movement did not come out of nothing. African Americans have been fighting for better living conditions for as long as there have been in the United States. Abolitionists were already striving to eradicate racial injustice and the institution of slavery by the time of the American Revolution, later in the 18th century.
The kidnapping and horrific murder of Emmett Till, age 14, on every news and a known story in every news book on social justice, occurred during a spike in anti-black violence in the summer of 1955. This tragedy sparked both widespread and forceful protests from black and white Americans. By December 1955, Martin Luther King, Jr. had organized a long-lasting campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregation. This movement garnered both domestic and foreign attention.
From Black Power To Martin Luther King Jr.’s Execution
The Selma-to-Montgomery March in March 1965 would turn out to be the final significant Southern protest movement to be supported widely by whites outside the region. After that, however, the popularity and effectiveness of peaceful protests as a strategy for achieving African American objectives decreased as voting rights legislation, increased racial violence in Northern cities, and white hostility toward Black militancy all came into impact.
Additionally, the growing militancy of Black activists led by the recently killed Black Nationalist Malcolm X sparked an increasing desire among African Americans to establish Black-controlled institutions to gain political power and cultural autonomy.
The Poor People’s Campaign failed after King was killed in April 1968. The Black Panther Party and a few other Black militant organizations were subjected to harsh government harassment by the local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO).
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission, we find in the best books about social justice, concluded that the nation was headed “toward two societies, one Black, one White—separate and unequal,” despite civil rights laws, in 1968. When the commission’s report was published, important new civil rights initiatives from the 1970s and 1980s had been successfully resisted by arguments that Black achievements had led to “reverse discrimination” against whites.
The Twenty-First Century
African Americans’ acquisition of citizenship rights resulted in less benefit for the impoverished than those with intellectual and social advantages, as was the case for formerly colonial people in nations that achieved independence in the years preceding World War II. Affirmative action programs, which enhanced chances for many Black students and workers as well as for women, people with disabilities, and other victims of prejudice, were founded on American civil rights laws from the 1960s.
The Cases Shelby County V. Holder And Black Lives Matter
During Obama’s presidency tenure, the issue of police brutality against Black Americans gained more and more attention. The movement’s name expressed disapproval of the unjust deaths of Black people by police and a call for society to regard Black people’s humanity and lives equally to those of white people.
As BLM garnered active support from millions of Americans in 2020, George Floyd’s death from a Minneapolis police officer squatting on his neck for almost nine minutes caused a significant explosion of outrage and protest in cities and villages across the country. Bill Chambers’s book, The Muslim American, Fight For Social Justice, is one of the best books about civil rights, which describes all about civil rights.
Most of the conservative Court argued that the execution of the law had mainly eliminated the environment that had encouraged discriminatory voting practices and low voter registration and turnout in the jurisdictions targeted by the act. However, following the ruling, several states implemented voter registration, identification, and voting processes, which voting and civil rights advocates immediately branded as attempts at voter suppression.
For Black Americans, the civil rights struggle was both liberating and scary. Legislation to prohibit racial discrimination in employment and housing was made possible by the work of civil rights activists and numerous demonstrators of all races. click
