Essay On The American Civil Rights Movement

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American Civil Rights Movement “Protests that involved ordinary people, not just politicians were the most popular and powerful”. To what extent do you agree or disagree?" Provide detailed examples to support your answer. I agree with this statement as many ordinary Americans deliberately challenge the Jim Crow Laws and were successful in their quests to do so. The Jim Crow Laws were introduced in every American state between 1887 and 1891 and were cancelled out in the 1950s. They divided the Blacks from the Whites and were very discriminative towards the Blacks. The Jim Crow Laws angered many Blacks and they then protested against the laws in various ways. Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark case in which a black man, Homer Plessy, challenged…show more content…
Rosa Parks was a 42 year old seamstress from Alabama, who, after a hard day’s work, refused to move seats for a white person, as she was Black and therefore supposed to give up her seat. She was fined $10, but her inspiring actions caused her to be given the title “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”. Parks, along with many other prolific Black activists such as: Martin Luther King jnr, Ed Nixon, and Jo Ann Robins; requested that Blacks no longer ride buses in Montgomery. As Blacks made up two-thirds of the population, bus companies would lose 75% of the day’s income. The protested lasted from December the 1st 1955 and finished on December the 26th 1956. During this time, Blacks travelled cycling, using taxis, mules, buggies, some even had housewives driving them to work if they were an employee of one. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was extremely triumphant and even had the support of the Whites as well as Americans in the North. It only ended after Federal Laws changed and declared Alabama bus segregation laws to be unconstitutional, therefore the boycott was most successful in helping to ensure Blacks were given more
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