The Civil Rights Movement has affected every single African American person in the south. The movement started in 1955 and changed the way African American were treated. With the help of people like Martin Luther King Jr, and Rosa parks African American people are now treated like American citizens.
[pullquote]¨I have a dream…¨ ~Martin Luther King Jr.[/pullquote]One of the most inspirational leaders of the movement was Martin Luther King Jr for giving his famous ¨I HAVE A DREAM¨ speech on the march on Washington D.C. He was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King, both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. King was assassinated in April 1968 by James Earl Ray, and continues to be remembered as one of the most lauded African-American leaders in history, often referenced by his 1963 speech, “I Have a Dream.¨
Another important person in this movement was Civil rights activist Rosa Parks and she was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP’s highest award. But on October 24 2005 died of old age when she was 92.
Some of the events that happen in this movement was the March on Washington when Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous ¨I have a dream¨. It was on August 28 1963 in front of 250,000 supporters and Dr King was on the steps of the lincoln memorial. He said I have a dream 8 times in his speech. People said that it was a defining moment of the movement. These are some of the famous lines from his speech:
¨I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four 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.”
Another event i want to talk about is The Montgomery Bus Boycott and it started when Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white man and she got arrested for it. Now when that event happen African American people stopped riding the bus unless they could sit wherever they wanted to sit on the bus and the bus company lost 50,000 people on there buses. With the help of Martin Luther King Jr the bus boycott was successful. The people marched for their bus rights from December 1 1955 to December 20 1956.
My last event will be about The Civil Rights Act of 1964. President John F Kennedy also had wanted to stop segregation so he created the law that would open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, as well as “greater protection for the right to vote”. But after the assassination of J.F.K on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, TX President Lyndon Johnson fought for the law for him. On June 19, the substitute (compromise) bill passed the Senate by a vote of 73–27, and quickly passed through the House-Senate and the 27 who didn’t want the law passed were people from the south.
With the determination of Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, John F Kennedy, and other civil right supporters, African American people are now treated equally . Without the civil rights movement African Americans will still be segregated from hotels, restaurants, schools, bathrooms and more. But Instead African Americans are now enjoying what they fought for.