Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement

HUMN410ON: Contemporary History

Professor Millsap

FALA11 Sec A

Melissa Weber

Introduction

The Civil Rights Movement was a very important part of American History not just for African American’s but as a whole nation. This movement helped to break the wall of segregation down and unit a nation as one. A lot of diverse, but important people played a big role at this time such as Martin Luther King Jr and JFK. The Civil Rights Movement timeframe is one of argument, some will argue it’s been ongoing since the first boat from African others argue it started after WWII. While the time of the Civil Rights Movement was a difficult time it has made a drastic change in the United States and continues to bring about changes.

The Beginning

“The civil rights movement began with the presence of enslaved blacks in the New World, with the first slave mutiny on the ships bringing them here”(Litwack, 2009, pg 3). Most people believe that Rosa Parks began the whole civil rights movement. She did in fact drive the Civil Rights Movement to unprecedented heights but it wasn’t the start of it. Although many people disagree as to when exactly the Civil Rights Movement started, most of the documentation begins with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka on May 1954. Brown vs. Board was the foundation for change in American History as a whole. Even before our nation birthed the controversial ruling on May 17, 1954 that stated separate educational facilities were inherently unequal, there was Plessy vs. Ferguson in 1896 that argued by declaring that state laws establish separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. “Long before Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks took center stage, black men and women, acting mostly as individuals but numbering in the thousands, waged guerrilla warfare on the infrastructure of Jim Crow” (Litwack, 2009, pg 6). Even before Brown v. Board segregation had occurred...