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21 December 2017

A Few Of The African American Civil Rights Movement Facts

By Catherine Graham


In the past, people segregated African Americans. They were seen as an important lee race, and they were treated poorly in all aspects of life. However, the fight for equality started taking place in the 1950s and 1960s. They took about a decade, but they finally paid off. In the middle of the twentieth century, there was still a lot of violence against black people. Below are some of the few African American civil rights movement facts.

In the 1940s black people were not included in highly paying jobs and most of the farmers and domestic workers. This was before world war two. They were not allowed to join the military, and it was then thousands of black people threatened to march to Washington DC and demand equal employment rights. In 1941, the then president opened military jobs among others regardless of race.

There was also the Montgomery bus system. This was a system that allowed various seats on the bus to be reserved for various races. The black people were made to seat in the back while the white people sat at the front. In 1955, Rosa park was the first black person to break the law. She refused to go to the back despite a white man lacking a seat. It led to her arrest.

Segregation had spread even into learning institutions. The black people were not allowed into the white people schools. The supreme court, however, did away with this law and most of the schools started inviting black schools. Nine students were to attend central high school but were met by a guard and an angry mob upon arrival. They came back two weeks later and were allowed inside.

In 1960 black people were not allowed to eat in the same places as the white people. Four students went into the wool worths lunch counter and refused to leave until they would be served. The next day, hundreds of other black people joined in the cause. The demonstrations carried on for days until the lunch counters some them too. The four students were the first to be served at the place they first stood their ground.

In 1963, Philip Rudolph, Martin Luther King, and Bayard Rustin arranged for a peaceful demonstration in Washington DC. The demonstration contained of up to two hundred thousand people, both black and white a show of unity amongst the people of both races. The peak of the speech was when Luther delivered his famous speech. It generated a popular slogan that has lasted years later.

At some point, 600 hundred people walked in protest after a white police officer killed a black human activist. The people matched towards the state of Alabama but were barred at Edmund Pettus bridge by the state police. They insisted on trying to get through, but they were beaten up and tear gas thrown at them. They were later rushed to the hospital.

Even after voting being made legal in 1957 in the USA, black people in the southern states still experienced challenges. The white people would put really difficult or impossible questions on the literacy tests just to fail them.




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