Do you agree that Martin Luther King was the most important factor in helping Blacks gain more civil rights in the 1960s?

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Rob Macleod

Do you agree that Martin Luther King was the most important factor in helping Blacks gain more civil rights in the 1960’s?

        

After the American Civil war, 1861-1865, there were still problems for black Americans even though slavery had been abolished. Black Americans in the South were especially affected, as this was where many of the slaves had worked. After being freed, most stayed, which lead to hatred and non-acceptance of blacks when they were officially granted equal rights to whites. The Southern states were not happy about this and decided to invent a set of laws in the 1890s called the ‘Jim crow laws’ which prevented blacks from having these rights. The Supreme Court ruled that the term ‘separate but equal’ was fair. From 1896, blacks in the Southern states had separate facilities like different wash basins, public toilets and waiting areas. This was justified by claiming that each group had the same facilities, yet this was not always the case. The segregation extended to public transport, neighbourhoods, government, Police and even took away their right to vote. As a result of the racism, the Ku Klux Klan was born. Founded by racist Southern whites, they reigned with fear over black communities, giving blacks names like “Negroes” and committing hate crimes like kidnappings, mutilation and murder, which supported their racist and prejudice views. However, in the 1950’s people began to stand up for the rights of blacks. Events like the murder of Emmett Till and the situation at Little Rock High school began to make a difference.

Emmett Till was a 14 year old visiting the South. In 1955, he allegedly said, “Bye baby” to a white woman and later that night the partner of the woman brutally murdered him. It caused uproar within white and black communities because the murderers were found not guilty by an all white jury and people began to sympathize with Blacks who were being so unfairly treated. At Little Rock high school in Arkansas, black students scheduled to start at the school in 1957 were stopped from going into the buildings by a force sent by Orval Faubous (governor of the school). President Eisenhower then sent federal troops to protect the students from the abuse that was being shown towards them. This again caused sympathy towards blacks, which assisted their cause by the media attention that was published about the event. In 1954, a black citizen called Mr. Brown tried to force the Topeka board to accept his little girl Linda into a white school. He succeeded and “Separate but equal” was ruled unconstitutional in schools. Rosa Parks was the inspiration of the “Bus Boycott” in Montgomery, Alabama. She refused to give up her seat to a white person in December 1955 and was arrested and fined. In retaliation to this, blacks began a peaceful protest, where no blacks would ride on the buses.  This protest went on for a year. Eventually, segregation on public transport was ruled unfair and bus companies were forced, due to huge loss of money, to accept blacks as equals on public transport. The boycott was a key event, not only because it abolished segregation on buses, but because it was the event that introduced Martin Luther King as a spokesperson for the boycott and as a leader in the civil rights movement. Throughout the 1960s he became a very prominent figure in the fight for civil rights.

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He was the leader of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference). His beliefs in non-violence were inspired by Gandhi, and his protests were originally derived from Gandhi’s techniques. He made several protests of this nature in the 1960’s. Events like the lunch counter sit-ins, and large well publicized marches, were of much help to the Civil rights cause. Volunteers would sit at all white lunch counters, some blacks and whites together or just as a group of blacks. They were treated very badly and attacked verbally and physically. As these people bravely took the abuse of white racists, they ...

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