1960s Civil Rights Movement in America

The Civil Rights Movement in America in the ‘60s was significant and eventful. The era was marked by protests against the Vietnam War and passing of the most advanced civil rights laws.

Four black students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at the lunch counter located in the Greensboro’s Woolworth’s store and ordered coffee on February 1, 1960. The waitress refused to serve them unless they drank it while standing because the counter only served white customers. The next day they returned with more students, and sat in peaceful protest until the counter closed for the day. Students from other southern black colleges and universities followed with similar sit-ins that brought about the desegregation of several hundred-lunch counters. During the sit-ins the young black protestors organized the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).

Many SNCC members joined forces with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which was founded in Chicago in the ‘40s. It organized the Freedom Rides of 1961. The first group of Freedom Riders boarded two buses in Washington D.C and embarked on a route through the South to test the 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton vs. Virginia, which had outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals. Even though the Freedom Riders were arrested, beaten and in one instance had their bus burned down they were eventually successful, prompting the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the ruling in Boynton. Martin Luther King Jr. led a mass protest campaign in Albany, Georgia during 1961-62 called the Albany movement. In 1962 Cesar Chavez in California organized a migrant farm worker strike and a 250-mile march. His goal was to bring improvements in working conditions and low pay for Hispanic farm workers.

In 1962, a black student named James Meredith tried to attend the University of Mississippi. The University officials refused. The US President John F Kennedy sent federal law officers to help him. US President Lyndon Johnson signed a major civil rights bill in 1964 that prohibited discrimination in public schools on account of national origin, race, color, gender or religion. In 1963 hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators went to Washington D.C where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous speech ‘I have a dream’. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. In 1965 a black woman named Rosa Parks got on a bus in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. She was seated behind in a bus. The bus became crowded and there were no more seats for white people. The bus driver ordered her to give up her seat to a white person. Rosa Parks refused and was arrested.

The Civil Rights act of 1968 banned discrimination in the rental or sale of housing. Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Finally racial separation on the buses in Montgomery was declared illegal. After the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 the civil rights movement had begun to lose momentum. Blacks in more than one hundred cities in America rioted.

The movement opened new economic, social and political opportunities to blacks. However it is argued that it fell short of addressing the economic needs of poor Americans. It had a strong effect on the way people thought and acted.