Get Smart in America
Throughout the history of blacks in America, there have been periods that could be called "civil rights movements." Though brief, these spurts offered guidance and a good background for crafting techniques and strategies to the leaders and organizers of America's modern Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. These spurts also lay the foundation that made the modern Civil Rights Movement conceivable, much less possible. The rights secured by these original historical moments of social mindedness--limited though they were--made it possible for blacks in 1950s America to amplify and expand the fight for complete equality.Previous to the 1950s Civil Rights movement, the longest sustained period of black struggle occurred around the turn of the century, at the close of the once- promising Reconstruction era, which instead of reducing or overcoming institutionalized racial tension, had the opposite result. By the late nineteenth century, the rights of blacks, granted just thirty-five years earlier with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were already being eroded and hardened into the Jim Crow system. In response grew two related but radically different responses from the black community. The two major figures of this struggle
and dedicated to non-violence, and that which emerged in the late 1960s, the more militant Black Power Movement. For several months, civil rights activists had been planning a boycott of the Montgomery bus system, but were unsure of when or how to begin. Southern white backlash, and the President Eisenhower's unwillingness to support the Court's ruling, reduced the process of school desegregation to a snail's pace. The response to the decision also provided a blueprint that much of the rest of the civil rights movement would follow. Other pastors had been urging him for months to get involved with civil rights struggles and he had politely declined, claiming that he was too busy with his church. In his famous Atlanta Compromise speech on September 18, 1895, he stated, "in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. 2 percent of black children attended integrated schools. But after much urging he finally agreed to lead the boycott, catapulting himself onto the national stage. Washington was a moderate on the question of segregation. They were convicted and forced to pay $1,000 fines, but the convictions only enhanced their moral credibility. It gave civil rights organizers their first serious victory of the 20th century and made it clear that blacks were indeed citizens of the republic, with rights to match. King's house was bombed, and he and 89 others were indicted for conspiracy to conduct an illegal boycott.
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