For what reasons and with what success did black Americans fight for their Civil Rights in the 1950's and 1960's?

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Lauren Wood

For what reasons and with what success did black Americans fight for their Civil Rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s?

The Black people came to be living in America because most of them came over from Africa and India on slave ships, ready to be sold when they arrived, as slaves for the American white people. The slave trade was very popular, and blacks were brought over from places like Africa, and India, and then sold in America as slaves. The slaves were then given rights, and ‘set free’ so that they could lead their own lives and not be under anyone’s control, and owned.

In America, the black people had long term and background grievances that were day to day prejudice and discrimination. There were little things such as in the south the blacks were treated no better than the slaves. The blacks in America were not allowed to live their own lives, they wanted, like all humans to have the chance to live happy and fulfilled lives, and have some of the things that the white people have. In some places in America the black people were not even regarding as being humans. They were treated like animals, and this was extremely racist. A source that supports this view is source E. Source E is ‘A statement from a book, called American Dreams Lost and Found by S. Terkel’ Vernon Jarrett is saying that his dad was seventy nine, and a white man had never called him ‘mister’ more than four or five times. His mother had been called ‘girl’, and ‘nigger’ and ‘auntie’. This supports the cause of long term grievances. Another source that does support this is source F, but it is not as useful as source E, to support this cause. Source F is a Florida barber speaking in ‘change and continuity in twentieth century America’ by J.A. Braeman, 1968. The barber says what the black people are good for, and these are things like, ‘ shinin’ shoes, bell hoppin’, street sweepin’ and these are just a few that he mentions. This shows that in the south it is worse, because the black people are just used to do these jobs.

There were also specific problems, these were mainly in the south but they did exist in the north in some cases as well. Some of these problems were that blacks had inequalities in education, so they had little chance of competing for better jobs and opportunities. Sources that support this are sources B & D. B is about a school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The president wanted it to integrate, the black and the white children, and the state governor refused. So Eisenhower sent 10000 national guardsmen and 1000 paratroopers to make sure that these children got a proper education. D is a statement from the US Supreme Court, stating the law that it was illegal for any state schools to be white only. Most southern states found ways to dodge this though and kept their all white schools. As well as these sources there is the case of Louise Brown, who was refused entry into a white school. Also, the case of Elizabeth Eckford, who was jeered and threatened when she tried to go to a white school.

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Another specific problem was that blacks were only allowed to do poorly paid and manual jobs with no prospects. Some sources that support this are sources F and J. Source F is again the Florida barber, describing the occupations that blacks are allowed to do, and source J is the statistics of black male unemployment against national unemployment. This shows that black males are more unemployed than the national figure for all the people in the USA, and this doesn’t change.

Another specific problem was that there was inequality before the law and little protection from it. ...

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