USA: A Divided Union?

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USA: A Divided Union?

Freedom riders were a group of men and women young and old who boarded buses and planes bound for the south. There main aim was the get rid of the Jim Crow laws. They would ride through the towns sitting wherever they liked regardless of their race (this was breaking the law in Southern States) A few times, the freedom riders would be met with no resistance, but more often angry racist mobs awaited their arrival at the stations. As a non-violent group, the freedom riders would not fight back to the abuse they received.

The Second World War helped develop the Civil Right movement due to the fact that it brought Blacks together with Whites. During the Second World War Blacks where able to fly planes, Roosevelt set up the FEPC. This meant that discrimination against Black Americans was ended in government agencies. Things like this helped the Civil Rights Movement as Blacks felt they should get the same treatment in other aspects of life. Black Americans fought not only for America, but for their human rights back home, this was called the Double V campaign. After the war, Black Protests started to happen all over the country (Brown v Topeka, Montgomery Bus Boycott) sparking the real start of the Civil Rights movement.

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During the 50’s and 60’s one man helped improve the treatment of Black Americans using no violence whatsoever. Martin Luther King believed in non-violence, he said that this was not cowardly but that it was a method that did resist. King set up various sit-ins in and around southern states such as Georgia and Atlanta. King also encouraged boycotts, one of the most publicized being the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama. It all came about when Rosa Parks (Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured people) was sitting on a bus and when asked to move ...

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