The USA Civil Rights Movement

A decision, today, in the case of African American student Linda Brown. Brown’s father, along with 12 other parents, took the school board in their hometown of Topeka, Kansas, to court over rules stating their children cannot attend the white schools closest to their homes. In the southern United States in the 1950s, there are separate schools for Black children and white children. And in movie theatres, restaurants, on buses and trains, Black people have to sit in a separate area. Black people have to live in separate neighbourhoods, too.

It is this policy of separation, or segregation, that those in the Brown versus the Board of Education lawsuit are determined to change. Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Linda Brown. Segregation in public schools, the court decided, goes against the American Constitution. The court’s decision doesn’t change schools overnight. But the case does bring people’s attention to the need for equal opportunities and equal protection under the law for Black Americans.

If school segregation is unconstitutional, what about segregation elsewhere? The Civil Rights Movement is underway. On December 1st, 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, a Black woman named Rosa Parks is asked to give up her seat for a white passenger — the bus’s ‘coloured section’ and ‘white section’ are both full. Parks refuses. She is arrested.

After this, Black people across Montgomery refuse to ride the busses until they are no longer segregated. The boycott leads to a lawsuit, and in 1956, the Supreme Court bans segregation on busses. The Civil Rights Movement is gaining momentum. It needs a leader — someone who can speak about the issues Black Americans face and inspire people to keep fighting for change. A highly educated, young preacher rises to the challenge: the Reverend Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. King calls on Black Americans to challenge unfair laws without using violence. Black students visit ‘whites only’ lunch counters and remain there quietly until they are served or the store closes. Their protests are called sit-ins. Other protestors take long bus rides through southern states, making sure Black people and white people are being allowed to sit together.

They call themselves Freedom Riders. Peaceful protests are often met with anger and violence from police and private citizens. Protestors are arrested, threatened, beaten, and even murdered. Still, the protests continue, and the Civil Rights movement gains more and more supporters... An estimated 250 000 protestors have gathered in our nation’s capital today, for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

We go to Washington now as Dr. Martin Luther King prepares to address the crowds. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama... little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

The Washington March calls not only for an end to segregation, but to other forms of unfair treatment, discrimination, too — like Black people being stopped from getting certain jobs and being barred from voting in elections. The March pushes the government to take more action on civil rights. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act is passed, outlawing discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, and national origin. The Act makes segregation in public places, as well as discrimination at work, illegal. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act makes it illegal to block Black people from voting.

And in 1968, the Fair Housing Act prohibits racial discrimination when selling or renting houses. America is changed, though much work for equality and justice remains.