Civil Rights: The Struggle for Civil Rights

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Civil Rights : The Struggle for Civil Rights

Civil rights are those rights that if they are violated they may provoke a reaction . These are rights such as freedom of expression movement and freedom from servitude . When civil rights are divided along racial lines , class and religion then this is termed as segregation or discrimination . Civil rights in USA cannot be mentioned without talking about the African Americans . The civil rights movements that resulted were movements that were geared towards ending the segregation laws

. The struggle for these rights dates back to the 1860s after Abraham Lincoln the then president abolished slavery in America . After this , the southern whites resulted to segregating blacks in almost all areas be it political , social or economical . The civil rights for the blacks were violated in many ways . What action did they take to reverse the trend This is what this research will keenly focus on

After slavery was abolished in the 1860s , there came some punitive laws and customs that were used to separate the whites from the blacks for example , there were separate residential places , recreational places and schools for the whites and blacks . Basically , all public utilities were separated between those for the whites and for the blacks (Ginsberg et al 41-52 . Though there were separated , it was the blacks who were at the receiving end because all infrastructure , recreational , feeding places and services that were meant for the whites were better than those for the blacks . The blacks in fighting for their rights used various methods such as protest marches , legal actions , boycotts like the Montgomery bus boycott and the 1930s boycott on buying products from whites ' businesses

The main reason why the whites used segregation laws was to create a race that was inferior to them . These laws are often referred to as the Jim Crow laws named after the Minstrel performer who portrayed African Americans ' stereo types negatively . The laws were very common in the southern parts of America especially after the reconstruction period During this period , the blacks participated equally in all spheres of life with the whites a thing that was not taken kindly by the whites Fortunately to the whites , they were able to reverse this after their party Democratic Party won in the elections . This new government worked to suppress the blacks and to make them inferior to them and this was done by introduction of both state and local segregation laws . In other words , after the construction period was over , segregation in all places was legalized (Wright 271-272

After this party formed the government , segregation in voting education places and in other areas were enforced . The blacks were even forced to pass a literacy test for them to be allowed to vote . Those who would meet the requirements would not either be allowed to participate in the primaries . This mostly affected the southern blacks as there were only 10 percent of the blacks in the north but this...