The Civil Rights movement affected all of the African American people that are in the USA. The movement started around 1955 because of a bus boycott. The movement happened because African American people knew they were being treated unequal.
The mother of the the civil rights movement is most probably Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks was born in February 14th, 1913, and died in October 24th 2005. She got her education at Highlander Folk School, and Alabama State University. She was a secretary for NAACP.
The reason Rosa Parks was so important is because of the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1955 Rosa parks was returning from work and got on a city bus (that had a ‘colored section’ and a white section) she sat down on the the first seat in the colored section. Later on the white section got full so the driver made the ‘colored section’ go back a seat so that meant that Rosa had to get up. But she refused to get up so the driver called the cops. The evening she got arrested NAACP decided to organize a bus boycott. The boycott lasted 381 days with 50,000 people participating until a law passed saying that segregating in buses is bad.
[pullquote]”I have a dream…” Martin Luther King Jr. 1963[/pullquote]Martin Luther King Jr is probably the most important person in the civil rights movement, mostly because he lead the movement. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in January 15, 1929, and died in 1969 by getting shot on a balcony. Martin Luther King Jr. was a baptist Minister. He got his education in Booker T High, Boston University, and Morehouse college.
One of the things Martin is most recognized is by his famous ‘I Have a Dream speech’. On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people marched on the Lincoln Memorial to get the attention of president Kennedy to help get equality for African Americans. After the march important people involved with the Civil Rights movement took turns giving speeches. In his speech he told of a world where there was no segregation and how ‘Negroes’ were being treated unfair so they need to ‘cash in’ freedom. The famous line in his speech is the “I have a dream” part (can’t believe I had to google that).
Other famous lines in the speech were:
“I have a dream that one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
All of the work that Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa parks did finally paid off when the Civil rights act of 1964 law was passed. The law outlawed discrimination in the USA. The President that passed this law was Lyndon Johnson but was proposed by President John F. Kennedy who believed that everyone should have equal rights.
Through hard work and determination Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers (people like him) changed the way African Americans were treated in the USA. Without the civil rights movement our classroom, in 2015, wouldn’t have so many kids of different races and some races would still be treated unequally.