The Civil Rights Era
Introduction
The civil rights era in the United States was a decades-long struggle for social justice by African-Americans to end social injustices meted against them by the whites, such as racial discrimination and segregation, as well as disenfranchisement (Gardner, 2014). This paper looks at the events that took place during the era and how they influenced social justice policies and laws for Black-Americans. The paper also names the icons of the civil rights movements and their contributions to the struggle for equality.
The Timeline and Events of the Civil Rights Era
The era begins after the Reconstruction era in the last years of the 19th century to the 1960s at the peak of the civil rights movement. Although the Civil War resulted in the abolishment of slavery, blacks in the southern states continued to be discriminated especially by the Jim Crow laws. The provisions of these laws systematically excluded the black. For instance, racial intermarriages were illegal, and the blacks -Awere excluded from white neighborhoods, facilities, and schools (Dibua, 2010). Many of the African-Americans could also not vote because they failed the impossible to pass literacy tests, which were prerequisites to voting. Therefore, the civil rights era was the period that Black-American fought for the abolition of these laws and equal treatment under the law.
Major victories during the civil rights era were recorded from the 1940s after the then President Roosevelt signed an executive order that ended employment discrimination allowing the blacks to access jobs such as the military in 1941. This order was later followed by another signed by President Truman in 1998 and saw the end of segregation in the military. In the field of education, segregation in schools was abolished by the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of education in 1954 (Gardner, 2014). However, many schools remained segregated, sparkling the Central High School event in 1957, where nine black students were blocked from joining and continued to be harassed after they joined. The situation had not yet improved for the blacks in 1963 when George C. Wallace, the governor of Alabama, prevented two black students from enrolling in the state’s university, forcing President Kennedy to intervene by sending in the National Guard (Bethel, 2013,).
In 1955, Emmet Till, a young black boy was murdered whistling at a white woman and his murders acquitted by an all-white jury. This case brought attention to and fueled the civil rights movement. It was closely followed by the Montgomery bus boycott influenced by Rosa Parks. Parks was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white man on a bus. This Act inspired black community leaders led by Martin Luther King Jr to boycott the Montgomery bus system, a move that saw segregation laws abolished (Bethel, 2013).
The biggest first win against disenfranchisement for the blacks came in 1957 with the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 by president Eisenhower. It provided for federal prosecution of anyone who tried to suppress the voting rights of anyone. This Act was later strengthened by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Johnson outlawing the prerequisite voter literacy tests (Hall, 2015). One of the most significant events in the civil rights era was the March to Washington for jobs and freedom in 1963, where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The march resulted in the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or religion.
The struggle for social justice was an easy one, and it saw two of the civil rights leaders assassinated. These are Malcolm X, in 1965, and Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. Days after King’s assassination, the Fair Housing Act outlawing housing discrimination based on race, gender, or religion was passed(Hall, 2015). This Act was the last legislation during the civil rights era.
References
Bethel, K. E. (2013). The civil rights movement: Open access documents, media, resources, and websites: A Webliography. JSTOR, 2(2), 149. https://doi.org/10.5323/fire.2.2.0149
Dibua, J. I. (2010). Civil rights movement. African American Studies Center. https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.47807
Gardner, S. E. (2014). The civil rights movement in American memory. Journal of American History, 94(1), 354-355. https://doi.org/10.2307/25094938
Hall, J. D. (2015). The long civil rights movement and the political uses of the past. The Best American History Essays 2007, 235-271. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06439-4_11