The Civil Rights Movement is a movement to get People of Color equal rights.
It happened in America, mainly in the south, from 1954 until 1968. During this time black people had to follow segregation laws. Segregation means separate but equal. Even though it says that it was equal it was not.
The Blacks had to sit in the very back of the bus, drink from pipes off the wall, eat in separate restaurants, go to different schools, and they suffered from a lot of racism and brutality. Many people did not the treatment that they were given. They had many protests, boycotts, and strikes. They were sometimes peaceful but they also were violent sometimes. One of the boycotts was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This started after Rosa Parks was jailed for not giving up her seat on a bus in December 1, 1955. The Boycott lasted more than a year. During the Boycott, many colored people refused to ride the bus and instead walked everywhere.
One of the main leaders of the movement was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He used practices from Indian Nationalist Mahatma Ghandi. He wanted peaceful protest. King believed that words were stronger and had more power than fists. Both King and Parks were part of the Nation Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
After the Montgomery movement another organization was formed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr as its president. This organization was called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
A protest that did not go peacefully was the March From Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama. This March, which was organized by King’s organization, was a 50 mile march to protest against colored people not being able to use their constitutional right to vote. There was three different protest marches. On the first one, which took place on March 7, 1965 they only made it to the outskirts of selma before being attacked by local and county police and possemen with billy clubs and tear gas.
Because of how horrific the beatings were, that day is now referred to as bloody sunday. The second march took place two days later. This march only lasted to the outskirts of town before they were stopped again.
On the third day, they had federal protection so they finally ended up marching all the way to Montgomery. In the Civil Rights Movement there was many leaders and Important figures. If these figures were not here the Civil rights movement would not have been as successful.
These leaders are the ones who gathered everyone to fight for their rights, started the whole movement, and organized protests, rallies, boycotts, marches, and strikes. Nine months before Rosa Parks was famously arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus, Claudette Colvin refused to give her seat up. She was sitting in a seat next to a pregnant black women. The bus driver told them they both had to move or he would call the cops. The lady, Ruth Hamilton, said she was not going to get up and that she had paid her fare and that she didn’t feel like standing.
Colvin then had told the bus driver she was not going to get up either. The bus driver called the cops and when they got there they had managed to convince a black man a couple seats back to give up his seat for Mrs. Hamilton. Claudette still refused to give up her seat. The police officers, Thomas J. Ward and Paul Headley.
They took her wrists and put them in handcuffs. They then forcibly pulled her from the bus. Claudette was fifteen at the time. This happened in Montgomery, Alabama. She was found guilty for breachment of peace, violating the segregation law, and assault. In court, she was was testified for by her fellow classmate Annie Larkins Price.
Price accounted that there was no assault. Claudette spent one day in jail and then was bailed out by her minister. He said to her ” you have brought the revolution to Montgomery. Her story was never told as famously as Rosa Parks because of her young age, her very loud and sassy personality, and because she became pregnant with an older man’s child. People who considered using her story didn’t because they did not want to be embarrassed by her actions. After this all happened, Claudette Colvin became a nurse and is currently still alive and living in New York.
The civil rights movement was a very long,very necessary movement to give everyone equal rights. Even though there was a lot of horrible people who did horrible acts to people with colored skins in the end they got to end segregation and live equally. People like Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr played major roles in ending the unfair treatments by standing up for their rights and everyone else rights.
