The African-American Civil Rights Movement

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The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the post-Civil War reform movements in the United States that was aimed at eliminating racial discrimination against African Americans, and improving educational and employment opportunities, while establishing electoral power. During this period between 1865 and 1895 there was a tremendous change in the fortunes of the black community after the elimination of slavery in the South. In 1865, two important events in the history of African Americans being the Thirteenth Amendment, which eliminated slavery, and Union troops arrived in June in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, which gave birth to the modern Juneteenth celebrations. After the War, the federal government began a program…show more content…
Racism obstructs America's desire to be a land known for human equality so the struggle for equal rights was also a struggle for the soul of the nation. Civil rights devotees adopted a dual strategy of direct action combined with nonviolent resistance, which employed acts of civil disobedience. These acts served to incite crisis situations between civil rights advocates and governmental authorities at federal, state, and local levels generally had to respond with immediate action to end the crisis scenarios, most deemed as favorable to the protesters and their cause. Some of the different forms of civil disobedience employed included boycotts, practiced by the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) in Alabama. Sit- ins were demonstrated by the influential Greensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina; and protest marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama, (sparknotes.com,…show more content…
King reached his lifetime acclaim, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In 1965, his career had become frustrating with challenges, as the liberal coalition that had made possible the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to unravel., King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration, breaking with it in 1965 by calling for both peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. During the next years, King focused toward socialism and speaking of the need for economic justice and changes in American society thinking beyond the conventional, parameters of the civil-rights
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