African American History

The success achieved following the years of the Second World War only determined the Civil Rights activists to continue their fight for equal treatment . The important Supreme Court ruling of Brown v The Board of Education outlawed the segregated state sponsored school system , which had promoted legal segregation of elementary schools . However there was much need for a proper implementation of this decision and for further legal action . The murder of Emmet Till and the subsequent acquittal of his white killers represented a lost opportunity for the justice system to lay its

impartial role

From there on , the goals , the leaders and the tactics of the Civil Rights movement changed from legal to direct actions . This evolution was partly due to the fact that there were continuous attempts to interfere with legal actions that the NAACP was undergoing in achieving equality for the Black community . Thus the main goal became now the determined fight against segregation with clear targets such as desegregation of Albany or Birmingham (Jenkins 1997 . The means however , although they was less legal action involved , remained non-violent , and often took the form of boycotts , freedom rides . One such example was the Montgomery Bus Boycott against the segregated transportation system in Alabama , which resulted in the end in a Supreme Court ruling against the State of Alabama

The tactics involved activities at the local level , which were now conducted by Church members , thus the community became much more implicated . Among these , Dr . Martin Luther King , Jr . who would later become one of the leading figures of the Civil Rights Movement . Also sit-ins were organized by students in to encourage the desegregation in schools . The efforts culminated with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (African American Odyssey 2002

However , slowly , the cooperation between the black civil rights militants and the whites became an obstacle for those who believed in more radical moves . Thus leaders such as Stokely Carmichael began advocating a new concept , that of black power ' which demanded freedom from white authority both economically and political . Its means of representation sought more an improvement of the black communities rather than their integration in the white reality . Thus , it encouraged self consciousness and self reliance , along with the creation of a strong cultural conscience

The role of the black women is rather important as they too strived for recognition of their rights . However , the emancipation movement that had galvanized the black community was doubled by the feminist movement which in its turn demanded for equal rights for men and women (Williams n .d . theless , from a wider perspective , black women represented an indispensable element for the complete emancipation of the black community in offering both practical and moral support . One such personality was Gospel Singer Mahalia Jackson who had joined the Civil Rights Movement at the request of Dr . King and who represented an important figure for the black cultural emerging identity (African American Odyssey 2002

Bibliography

African American Odyssey (2002 . Sit-ins , Freedom Rides , and Demonstrations . Retrieved 9...