Protests have been a form of public expression for decades. When an event or situation is unjust, protests have been a way of civilly disagreeing to fight for justice. The Civil Rights Movement, which took place between 1954 until 1968, changed the entire way that the United States of America worked. The Civil Rights Act paved way not only for colored people, but for women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, disabled and immigrants’ people of all descent. Without protesting, the fight for equality may have been overlooked and justice may not have been served.
The 1950’s was a changing time in America. With soldiers returning home from World War two, the Cold War in its early stages, and discrimination occurring based on skin color. It didn’t matter how smart someone was, how kind they were or how much money they had, if they were African American, they were required by law to use a different facility from white people. These facilities, whether they be bathrooms, movie theaters, or schools, were not good quality compared to white people had. At this point in time, African Americans had been struggling for centuries with racism and bigotry. They were tired of having to live separate lives with subpar facilities. This ruling upset many people, especially southern white people who lived through generational racism and had no plans to stop it. Therefore, white people took their children out of school while using violence and harassment towards African Americans in hopes they would refrain from sending their children to school.
African Americans wanted equality and were tired of lawmakers doing nothing to help. They decided to take matters into their own hands. In December of 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus. She was taking the bus home after a shift working at a local department store. At the time, it was a law that black people must sit only on the back half of the bus and give up their seat for a white person if asked. When Rosa declined to give up her seat, she was arrested. Parks had a history of activism as she was also working as a secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and advocating for African American rights. Immediately Parks was bailed out of jail by Edgar Daniel Nixon, a well-known civil rights leader.
Following the days after her arrest, the Women’s Political Council, or WPC, started spreading awareness and making flyers letting other African Americans to boycott the bus following what happened with Parks. Among the African American community this news was spread. Pastors at churches would tell the church to avoid the bus. Newspapers shortly after published articles about the boycott that was about to happen. The following days, nearly 40,000 African Americans boycotted the bus, which was normally the majority of bus riders at the time. Leaders from around the area gathered to form the Montgomery Improvement Association which would become a successful campaign that focused national attention on racial segregation in the South (The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, 2020). They decided to use Martin Luther King Jr. as the president of the group. King was a pastor in Alabama at the time who had spent years in college studying medicine and law. He was passionate about helping his community and believed that with enough persistence, the world would change.
As many as seventy five percent of Montgomery’s bus riders were African American and with them not riding the bus, it left them in a hardship when it came to transportation. Luckily, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association organized carpools and other African American taxi drivers would only charge ten cents in order to make this boycott possible. Neighbors organized carpools and shared phone contacts to address unanticipated needs, such as having to take someone to the hospital (Smith, 2015). After 381 days, the boycott ban was lifted due discrimination violating the 14th amendment. Although buses were now able to be integrated, it didn’t come without violence. Several African American leaders ‘homes were bombed, buses were sniped, and tension grew in the city between African Americans and white people. After much violence, the perpetrators were caught and arrested, and justice was served. This brought an end to bus related violence. Although the bus boycott was over, there was still a fight for equality. Martin Luther King Jr. remained a leader in the civil rights movement as he knew his work was just beginning. Dr. King then founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in order to educate and eliminate segregation in the south.
In 1954, segregated schools were outlawed. On September 3rd, 1957, nine African American students showed up to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas for their first day of school. When trying to enter, they were met by the Arkansas Nation Guard in order to intimidate them from entering on behalf of the state’s governor. Sixteen days later, the nine students tried again, this time being able to enter the school and stay for three hours. After an angry mob tried to enter the school, the students were sent home. President Roosevelt intervened and two days later, the students returned with not only the Nation Guard, but the U.S. Army who escorted the students inside the building. Although the students were finally able to attend, they were still being harassed daily just because of their skin color.
Soon thereafter, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed allowing anyone to vote regardless of their ethnicity or to disparage them from voting. Segregation was still far from being over. In 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four African American college students sat down at a Woolworths Luncheonette restaurant. When restaurant staff refused to serve them, they stayed. The four students remained passive and calm, and they stayed until the store closed. This started a sit-in protest in the south where African American people would go into diners, libraries, and other facilities and refuse to leave if not served. In response to the protestors, dining facilities became integrated in the summer of 1960.
In 1961, a group called the Freedom Riders wanted to see for themselves how the segregation of interstate transportation ban was working. Their goal was to take a bus tour through the south to see if they faced any discrimination since the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia. With backlash and no support from white people, they took the bus system all the way from Washington D.C. to Alabama where the bus was bombed on Mother’s Day. After finding another driver, with help from Robert Kennedy, they reached Montgomery, Alabama where a white mob attacked the bus. Martin Luther King Jr. sent U.S. Marshalls out to Montgomery to escort the crew which took them out to Mississippi. The group ended up in jail by then due to passing through a “whites-only” area but later the Supreme Court reversed the charges. This led to many other people doing the freedom rides as well as a form of protesting against the bus system. Later that year, the Kennedy Administration put into laws restrictions that would not allow segregation among interstate traveling.
One of the most famous protests in time is the March on Washington. On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. His speech reached more than 200,000 people standing there that day and led to a peaceful march for equality for everyone. Dr. King did not want his supporters to engage in any hurtful but to remain calm and passive aggressive. He had been impressed by the teachings of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi on nonviolent resistance. King wrote, “I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (Killcoyne, 2015). The Kennedy Administration was impressed by his speech and drafted the Civil Rights Act, but it wouldn’t go into effect until after President Kennedy passed away. Kennedy’s Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed it into law that next year. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 guaranteed no discrimination in employment, the use of all facilities, and no segregation when it came to voting.
Although protesting continued to work to an advantage, it also came with violence. On March 7th, 1965, what would be known as Bloody Sunday occurred where hundreds of peaceful protestors participated in the Selma to Montgomery March where they were protesting the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was killed by a white police officer and were seeking justice. As they came closer to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama police who were sent by the governor, George Wallace, blocked the way for protestors to make it through. Wallace was known to not support desegregation which caused police to become violent towards these protestors. Protestors were beat, teargassed, and some even hospitalized, but they did not back down. People from all over the world wanted to retaliate, but Dr. King reminded them not go use violence and that they needed to remain calm and move forwards with nonviolent protests.
Three years later, in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. More rioting took place following his death as equality was still not reached. Not even a week following Dr. Kings death, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was established making it a crime to discriminate when selling, renting, or financing a home based on ethnicity, race, gender, sex, or religion. It was passed quickly as a final way to say thank you to Dr. King for his work over the years. Since then, a variety of various civil rights laws have been passed or amended. As of March 2022, an Emmitt Till Anti- Lynching Act was put into place to ensure actions will be taken if lynching occurs and making it now a federal hate crime, nearly sixty eight years after Emmitt Tills passing.
In 2023, there is still work to be done to ensure equality for everyone. Although the world looks much different now than it did in the 1960’s, segregation still exists. Today’s Black Lives Matter movement rests on the foundation of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and lessons from that earlier period are relevant to advancing racial justice today (Negotiation Journal, 2021). Hate crimes and racism are still very much applicable in America even though it may not look like it used to. In recent years, the number of African American people killed by white police officers has increased. In 2020, George Floyd was accused of using a counterfeit bill to pay at a convenience store when the police were called. As police arrived, within minutes George was pinned to the ground with an officer on his neck and unconscious. Begging for the officer to get off his neck, saying he couldn’t breathe, and on video crying for help, even fellow officers refused to intervene. Within eight minutes, George was dead. Officers involved have since been arrested.
In 2019, Elijah McCain was walking home from a convenience store and had police called on him because someone said he looked suspicious. The police arrived, and after struggling to handcuff Mr. McClain, officers brought him to the ground and used a carotid hold, which restricts blood to the brain to render someone unconscious (Tompkins,2020). Fifteen minutes later, paramedics arrived and injected Elijah with Ketamine which sedated him. This caused him to go into cardiac arrest and he died a few days later. In November 2021, the McClain family reached a $15 million settlement with the city of Aurora in the civil rights lawsuit filed over McClain’s violent arrest and subsequent death (ABC News Network, n.d.). Since then, justice has still not been served and the police officers are still awaiting trial.
The Civil Rights Act not only affected African American lives, but others as well. Women still deal with pay discrepancies in the workplace as well making nearly thirty percent less than men in 2023. Women still don’t have equal rights, as men still get to dictate what women do with their bodies as Roe vs. Wade was reversed in June of 2022 making it not a constitutional right for an abortion anymore. Many states still have the ability to allow abortions but, in the south, where many of these state governors are still against abortion, it can be nearly impossible for a woman to have that ability, even despite circumstances.
Those included in LGBTQ also are still fighting for equal rights. In Texas, policy makers are fighting for trans youth to not be able to have access to certain healthcare. For example, youth would not be allowed to have trans related surgeries. Doctors who help youth with hormone therapy, puberty blockers, or other transition related treatments would get their licenses revoked. LGBTQ clubs and places of comfort have been attacked by mass shooters leaving several people dead just because of who they are and who they love. Some people have not been able to get employment, find housing, adopt children, or even being able to engage in public life.
Although we have come far from the 1960’s, there is still much work to do as a society that strives to be inclusive. In the face of injustice, people band together to work for change, and through their influence, what was once unthinkable becomes common (Michael Capek, 2014). Learning from the past can help us educate ourselves on the harm that segregation does and to not make the same mistakes again. Protests across the world for equal rights, whether that be for justice, woman’s rights, or who to love, can be beneficial in a society that refuses to change. As Martin Luther King once said, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle”. In order to make the world a better place, society must learn to become more empathetic, forgiving, and educated individuals.
