EOTO 2: Civil Rights Era- What I Learned

 

Even today the Civil Rights Movement has a lasting impact. The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justices that took place during the early 1950s to late 1960s for African Americans to gain equal rights under the law in America. With a movement as great as this one, there had to be some negative and positive things in a reaction to the movement. 

 

One positive event that I thought I knew a lot about but learned something new was the Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After Rosa sat on the front of the bus, refusing to give up her seat to a white man leading to her arrest. Parks’ courage led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott lasting 381 days. By December 21, 1956, buses were fully integrated. Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders boycotted the bus system. African Americans represented about 75 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership. 

 

One negative event during the civil rights movement that I learned about was the murders of civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. They were tortured and murdered by the KKK with help from the deputy sheriff near Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The three young men had traveled to Neshoba County (from the Freedom Summer orientation in Oxford, Ohio) to investigate the burning of Mt. Zion Methodist Church, which had been a site of a CORE Freedom School.

President Johnson and civil rights activists used the outrage over the activists' deaths to gain passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which Johnson signed on July 2. This and the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965 contributed to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which Johnson signed on August 6 of that year.