Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s
the most prominent activists of non-violence and direct action, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta on 15 January 1929, his roots in the African-American Baptist church. After attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, King went on to study at the Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, where he deepened his understanding of theological scholarship and discovered Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent strategy for social change. Following the success in Montgomery, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The campaign focused on “direct action” and involved non-violent protest in the form of boycotts, demonstrations and marches against the denial of Civil Rights to African-Americans. In 1959, King toured India and further developed his understanding of Gandhian non-violent strategies, which helped him use strategies such as sit-ins to integrated public places.
In the spring of 1963, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) lead mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where local white police officials were known for their violent opposition to integration. The demonstration ended in clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police armed with dogs and fire hoses, this generated attention all over the world and brought to light the Civil Rights Movement.
President Kennedy responded to the Birmingham protests by submitting broad civil rights legislations to Congress, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Later, mass demonstrations finished in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which more than 250,000 protesters gathered in Washington, D. C. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
The march on Washington, the murder of the four little girls in Birmingham and the assassination of President Kennedy determined the strong need for a Civil Rights Act, and, after much work by King, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on Independence Day, 4th July, 1964. Later that year King was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts in the Civil Rights Movement. After the Civil Rights Act was passed the Civil Rights Movement gained Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court statement overruling state law forbidding interracial marriage.
The Civil Rights Movement was a result of Rosa Parks’ first brave protest and a transport for King’s strong message to the USA. Between them, it can be said that they established the Movement and helped pass the first legislations in a step to racial equality.