Terrible Record Of Black Voting Rights Violations example essay topic

The Civil Rights Movement started with the The Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks Was a Educated women she attended the laboratory school at Alabama State College. Even with that kind of education she decided to become a seamstress because of the fact that she could not find a job to suit her skills. Rosa Parks was arrested December 1955. Rosa Parks Entered a bus with three other blacks and sat on the fifth row.

The fifth row was the first row the black could occupy. After a few stops later the rows in front of them where filled with whites. According to the law at the time blacks and whites could not occupy the same row. There had been one white man left with out a seat. The bus driver had told the four to move so the white man had a place to sit.

The other three that was with Rosa Parks had moved. Rosa Parks however did not. She refused and was arrested. E.D. Nixon post bond for Rosa Parks. He told her that with her permission they could break segregation from buses with her case. Jo Ann Robinson made fly ers and distributed them with her students. The fly ers urged people to stay off the buses on Monday the day Rosa Parks case was due.

Martin Luther King, Jr. a minister thought that if they could 60 percent of the blacks to stay off the buses the boycott would be a success. Martin Luther King Jr. thought he saw a miracle when he saw bus after bus pass his house with no blacks in them. That night they had called a meeting him and other ministers and blacks of the community which they called there self (MIA) Montgomery Improvement Association. They elected King the president of the group. They had a decision to make whether or not to continue with boycott or not.

Then E.D. Nixon rose to speak: "What's the matter with you people? Here you have been living off the sweat of these washerwomen all these years and you have never done anything for them. Now you have a chance to pay them back, and you " re too damn scared to stand on your feet and be counted! The time has come when you men is going to have to learn to be grown men or scared boys". The MIA had then decided to let the people vote on whether or not to let the boycott continue or not. They held a mass meeting and it was obvious to see that they decided to continue with the boycott.

When the boycott began no one had expected for it to last this long. On Thursday, December 8, the fourth day of the boycott King and the other members schedule a meeting with lawyers and officials of the bus company's to discuss a moderate desegregation plan. The MIA was hopeful that the meeting would go well and the boycott would end. The city officials refused and also made announcement that any cab driver charging less then 45 cent would be prosecuted.

Which before the cabs where charging 10 cent the same amount of charge the buses charged. Which gave thousand of black no way to get to work? The MIA made a private taxi service which had blacks with cars pick up blacks without. King's home was bombed. Also Nixon's home was also bombed. After that they turned to the law.

The whites arrested blacks for any minor traffic violation possible. No matter the problems they faced they did not break down. They took it all the way to the federal courts. November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal court's ruling, declaring segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was officially over. Although the boycott was over the whites did not take this lightly.

There was a series of bombings, threats and attempts to scare blacks off busses. The first Sit-Ins happen when four black men entered F.W. Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased some school supplies, then went to the lunch counter and asked to be served. One of the students said 'We believe, since we buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we should get served in this part. ' They sat there until the store had closed and still they had been denied service. This first sit-in had very little effect. Soon words began to spread.

Gordon Carey, a representative from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), came down from New York to organize more sit-ins. In a few weeks several cities began sit-ins mainly in Woolworth's and S.H. Kress stores. The basic concept of sit-ins students would go up to the counter and ask to be served and if they would where served them they would move on. If they where not served they would wait till they are served. If they happen to be arrested a new group would come to replace them. They had standards also.

Like don't talk back or strike back if attack, always face the counter, and to be on there best behavior. They had to wear there best Sunday cloths they had. Also not to hold conversations or to block entrances. When Northern students heard of the movement, they decided to help their Southern counterparts by picketing local branches of chain stores that were segregated in the South. The first few weeks of sit-ins were fairly quiet.

The black people where not served or been harassed much either. Then, on February 27, sit-in students in Nashville were attacked by a group of white teenagers. When police arrive they let the white kids that hit the black kids go, and they arrested the blacks for disorderly conduct. No matter what they did or how many times they been arrested there still was a counter full of students not served. Over Easter Weekend, Ella Baker of the SCLC helped organize a conference of sit-in students from around the nation. She encouraged the students to form an independent organization.

They formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced 'snick') to lead the sit-in effort. On April 19, Z. Alexander Looby's home was destroyed. She was fairly a conservative person. So the destruction did not only enrage blacks but also whites. 2,500 students and community members staged a silent march to City Hall that day.

When they arrived at city hall Mayor Ben West was waiting for them. They had asked the mayor if it was right to discriminate against someone only because there color of there skin. Mayor Ben did not find that reasonable. So, the merchants decided if Mayor Ben said it wasn't they should start serving blacks. It was almost as a excuse so they didn't move n there own. A few weeks later on May 10, six Nashville lunch counters began serving blacks.

Sit-Ins however where not over, they continue doing sit-ins in some parts of the South. They continued in some areas of the South until and even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared segregation at lunch counters unlawful. In addition, the technique of the sit-ins was used to integrate other public facilities, such as movie theaters, and SNCC, the student group that rose out of the sit-ins, continued to be involved in the civil rights movement for many years. Sit-Ins were a big part of the civil rights movement.

They showed that nonviolent direct action and youth could be very useful weapons in the war against segregation. Birmingham was nicknamed 'Bombingham' because it was the site of eighteen unsolved bombings in black neighborhoods over a six-year span and of the vicious mob attack on the Freedom Riders on Mother's Day 1961. The city was going threw a major change. Voters decided to rid the city of the three-man city commission and instead elect a mayor, mostly to force Bull Connor, commissioner of public safety and the man largely responsible for the attack on the Freedom Riders, to step down. There was a problem tough. The city commission refused to step down.

On April 6, police arrested 45 protesters marching from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church to city hall. The next day, Palm Sunday, more people were arrested. In addition, two police dogs attacked nineteen-year-old protester Leroy Allen as a large crowd looked on. In response to the protests, Judge W.A. Jenkins, Jr., issued an order preventing 133 of the city's civil rights leaders, including King, his friend and fellow SCLC leader Ralph Abernathy, and Shuttles worth from organizing demonstrations. On May 2, children, ranging in age from six to eighteen, gathered in Kelly Ingram Park, across the street from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Around 1: 00, fifty teenagers left the church and headed for downtown, singing 'We Shall Overcome.

' They were arrested and placed in police vans. Another group left the church, and they were also put in vans. Soon the police began stuffing the protesters in school buses because there were no more vans. Three hours later, there were 959 children in jail.

The jails were absolutely packed. The next day even more children had came out. Bull Connor was determined not to let them into downtown. He had got the firefighters to pull out hoses and spray the kids. The blast of the hoses was strong enough to break bones.

In addition, Connor had mobilized K-9 forces, which attacked protesters trying to enter the church. Pictures of the confrontation between the children and the police shocked the nation. The entire country was watching Birmingham. The demonstrations escalated.

Because the jails were filled, the police did not know what to do. Finally, the Birmingham business community, fearing damage to downtown stores, agreed to integrate lunch counters and hire more blacks, over the objections of city officials. King had gotten his much-needed victory. After Birmingham, President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights bill. To show that the bill had widespread support, civil rights groups united to organize a March on Washington.

Organizers hoped to draw a crowd of 100,000, but instead over 250,000 people from around the nation, arriving in more than thirty special trains and 2,000 chartered buses, descended on Washington, DC on August 28, 1963. The day was an overwhelming success. There was no violence and the event received extensive media coverage. It did not have an immediate impact on Congress. Kennedy's civil rights bill was not passed for nearly a year. It affected in some way just about everyone who participated or watched.

In the early 1960's, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation. 86% of all non-white families lived below the national poverty line. In addition, the state had a terrible record of black voting rights violations. In the 1950's, Mississippi was 45% black, but only 5% of voting age blacks were registered to vote. Some counties did not have a single registered black voter. Whites insisted that blacks did not want to vote, but this was not true.

Many blacks wanted to vote, but they worried, that they might lose their job. In 1962, over 260 blacks in Madison County overcame this fear and waited in line to register. 50 more came the next day. Only seven got in to take the test over the two days. Once they got in, they had to take a test designed to prevent them from becoming registered.

In 1954, in response to increasing literacy among blacks, a part of the test was changed from read or interprets a section of the state constitution to read and interpret that document. This allowed white registrars to decide whether or not a person passed the test. Most blacks, even those with doctoral degrees, failed. The NAACP went to Mississippi in an effort to register more blacks in the late 1950's. SNCC organized a voter registration education program, teaching a weekly class that showed people how to register. SNCC worker Marion Barry arrived on August 18 and started workshops to teach young blacks nonviolent protest methods.

Many of the blacks, too young to vote, jumped at the opportunity to join the movement. They began holding sit-ins. Some were arrested and expelled from school. Other protests by blacks were met with violence. At sit-ins which began on May 28, 1963, participants were sprayed with paint and had pepper thrown in their eyes. Students who sang movement songs during lunch after the bombing of NAACP field director Medgar Evers' home were beaten.

Evers himself was the most visible target for violence. He was a native of Mississippi and World War II veteran who was greeted by a mob of gun-wielding whites when he attempted to register after the war in his hometown of Decatur. Medgar was a target because he was the leader. The whole mood of white Mississippi was that if Medgar Evers were eliminated, the problem would be solved. At an NAACP rally on June 7, Medgar Evers told the crowd, 'Freedom has never been free... I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart.

And I would die, and die gladly, if that would make a better life for them. ' Five days later, he was shot and killed as he returned home around midnight. That fall, the Council of Federated Organizations (COF O), an umbrella organization of local and national civil rights groups founded in 1962, organized the Freedom Vote. The Freedom Vote had two main goals. To show Mississippi whites and the nation that blacks wanted to vote and, to give blacks, many of whom had never voted, practice in casting a ballot. The mock vote pitted the actual candidates against candidates from the interracial Freedom Party.

60 white students from Yale and Stanford Universities came to Mississippi to help spread word of the Freedom Vote. 93,000 voted on the mock Election Day, and the Freedom Party candidates easily won. After the success of the Freedom Vote, SNCC decided to send volunteers into Mississippi during the summer of 1964, a presidential election year, for a voter registration drive. It became known as Freedom Summer. 800 students gathered for a week-long orientation session at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, that June. They were mostly white and young, with an average age of 21.

They were also from well-to-do families, as the volunteers had to bring $500 for bail as well as money for living expenses, medical bills, and transportation home. Only a handful of recruits left the orientation session in Ohio. The volunteers helped provide basic services to blacks in the South. Northern lawyers worked in legal clinics to secure basic constitutional rights. One of Freedom Summer's most important projects was the establishment of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white regular Democratic Party in the state. This project actually started before Freedom Summer did, when MFDP won crucial support from the California Democratic Council, a liberal subsection of the state's Democratic party, and Joseph Rash, head of the DC Democratic Party, vice president of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and general counsel to the United Auto Workers.

President Johnson, however, backed the regular Democratic Party because he could not afford to lose their political support. In June, the names of four MFDP candidates were on the Democratic primary ballot as delegates to be sent to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, but all four lost. The MFDP held a convention and selected a 68-person delegation, which included four whites, to go to the national convention. By now, the party had the support of ADA, delegates from nine states, and 25 congressmen. The delegates wanted to be seated instead of the regular delegates at the convention. To do so, they had to persuade eleven of the more than 100 members of the Credentials Committee to vote in their favor.

They decided to provide testimony detailing how difficult it was for blacks to vote in Mississippi. Fannie Lou Hamer, one of twenty children of Mississippi sharecroppers, gave an impassioned speech to the Committee. President Johnson quickly called a press conference to turn news cameras away from Atlantic City, but the evening news that night showed portions of Hamer's testimony. Her emotional statement moved people around the nation. Senator Hubert Humphrey offered a compromise, with the blessing of the president. The white delegates would be seated if they pledged loyalty to the party platform.

Two MFDP delegates, Aaron Henry and Ed King would also be seated, but as at-large delegates, not Mississippi delegates. Neither side liked the agreement, but in the end, both sides accepted. In the end, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, like the Freedom Riders, did not fully accomplish its goals. The MFDP, however, was far from a failure. It showed blacks that they could have political power. There is no denying the effect that Freedom Summer had on Mississippi's blacks.

In 1964, 6.7% of Mississippi's voting-age blacks were registered to vote, 16.3% below the national average. In 1963, Selma, Alabama, was a small town of about 30,000 people. It was located in Dallas County, where only 1% of eligible blacks were registered to vote. As in Mississippi, it was supremely difficult for blacks to register to vote. The registrar's office was only open twice a month, and the registrars often came in late, took long lunch breaks, and went home early. Few blacks passed the required test for registration, even though they were sometimes more educated than the registrars.

In addition, whites met attempts by blacks to register with strong resistance. When SNCC organized a 'Freedom Day' on October 7, 1963, a local photographer, under orders from Sheriff Jim Clark, took pictures of the 250 blacks who lined up to register and asked them what their employers would think of the pictures. Police beat SNCC workers who tried to bring food and water to those in line. After winning the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC decided to turn their attention towards Selma. When Mayor Joseph Smitherman heard of King's plans, he urged Sheriff Clark not to use violence against the civil rights leader. Smitherman had just been elected that fall with a promise to bring industry to the town, and he did not want the negative publicity such violence could bring.

Clark, however, proved difficult to control. At one SCLC protest, he arrested Amelia Boynton, who was well-respected in the community. Pictures of the arrest, during which the club-wielding Clark pushed Boynton to the ground, ran in the New York Times and the Washington Post. On January 22, over 100 schoolteachers marched on the courthouse to protest Boynton's arrest. This gave added support to the movement because schoolteachers were considered to be among the elite, but they usually did not get involved in civil rights for fear of retaliation from the white school board.

Also, the march meant that Sheriff Clark could no longer claim that blacks were not registered to vote 'largely because of their mental I.Q. ' SCLC felt that it could not sustain demonstrations in a town as small as Selma for too long, so it turned its attention to protests in neighboring towns. On February 17, it planned a night march from the church to the jail in nearby Marion. Police spread rumors that participants in the march would break James Orange, an SCLC field secretary, out of jail. At the conclusion of the march, police and state troopers attacked the marchers. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black Vietnam veteran, was shot as he attempted to protect his mother. He died seven days later.

Marion's entire black community turned out for Jackson's funeral march. One of the organizers, Jim Bevel, said that 'it would be fitting to take Jimmie Lee's body and march it all the way to the state capitol in Montgomery". The march started on Sunday, March 7. As marchers crossed the Edmund Pet tus Bridge in Selma, named for a Confederate general, they were met by police and state troopers, some on horseback, with orders from Governor George Wallace to stop the march. They fired tear gas into the crowd and severely beat protesters. King, who had been preaching in Atlanta on 'Bloody Sunday,' as it was called, immediately started making plans for a new march on Tuesday.

He called on people from all over the country to join him in Selma. Hundreds of people, shocked by what they had seen on TV that night, dropped everything and responded. To prevent any further violence, the marchers wanted to get a court order prohibiting the police from stopping the march. King asked anyone who could to remain in Selma for another march. When the march entered Montgomery, it was 25,000 people strong and included many of the heroes of the civil rights movement, such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and John Lewis. It was a triumphant moment, a return to Montgomery, where the civil rights movement had started ten years earlier with the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

A few months later, blacks had reason to rejoice again. It was truly a day for celebration. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. By 1969, 61% of voting-age blacks in America were registered to vote, compared to 23% in 1964.

The Selma to Montgomery march clearly showed both how far American blacks had come and how far they still had to go. Ten years ago blacks could barley do anything and now they are equally treated how they are suppose to be. During the movement mainly great people died. The sacrifices they made help make America what it is today. The movement was from 1955-1965, those years where some of the hardest years for America.

We overcome our differences and now everyone is equal. This report was based on The Civil Rights Movement. Websites web of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.