History of the Civil Rights Movement

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Leader

Today, United States is known as the land of immigrants and diversity. It is the most developed and democratic nation with highest human values and fundamental rights. Though, the civil rights movement in America dates to the early, mid-20th century; it was the result of hundreds of years of slavery and discrimination of human beings. Initially, the movement was started by people like Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, who tried to imbibe the spirit of dignity amongst African-Americans. Booker T. Washington's educational address in 1895 at the Atlanta Exhibition was viewed as the first revolutionary moment by both African-Americans and whites throughout the nation.

Modern Civil Rights Movement or what is also known as African-American Movement lasted from 1954 to 1968. Even though its geographical location was concentrated in the southern states, its political location and its implications were felt throughout the country and it was a lesson for the coming generations. They were many reasons for the civil movement, but some of them are as follows.

1. Increased and rigorous economic oppression of black people, Latinos, and Asians; denial of economic opportunities; and widespread employment discrimination.
2. White American Democrats took over the power and passed a law that made voter registration almost impossible for blacks. Black voters were denied voting rights, and elections were made more complicated. As a result, the number of African-American voters dropped considerably, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. Since 1890, southern states of the old Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised most Afro-Americans.
3. Violence was not only limited to individuals but there was organizational and mass racial violence against blacks and Latinos in the southwest, and Asians in California.
4. Law was enforced in such a way that public facilities and government services such as education were divided into distinct "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, institutes for Afro-Americans were underfunded or without any funds and were of inferior quality.
5. For more than six decades, Afro-Americans were not able to elect a single individual in the south to represent their interests in Congress because they could not vote and they could not sit on juries limited to voters.
6. Black people had many social restrictions. They were denied travel and transport in elite class, and all public places and vehicles that were meant only for whites.

In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided a Journey of Reconciliation designed to test the Supreme Court's 1946 decision, which declared segregated seating of interstate passengers as unconstitutional. An interracial group of passengers met with heavy resistance in the upper South America. The Journey of Reconciliation broke down in no time. Clearly in the south, even the moderate Upper South, was not ready for integration. Then one day, a revolutionary movement started when the blacks of Montgomery and Alabama decided that they would boycott the public buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead of being relegated to the back when a white boarded. The movement was known as Montgomery Bus Boycott and it started on December 1, 1955. There was a dramatic incident which created history. Rosa Parks, a black lady boarded a city bus and sat with three other blacks in the fifth row. After some time, the front four rows were filled with whites and one white guy was left standing. Legally, blacks and whites could not occupy the same row, so the bus driver asked all the four blacks seated in the fifth row to change their seats. Three blacks out of the four did, but Rosa Parks refused to change the row and she was arrested for this crime, and thus the movement began. When John F. Kennedy was elected as president, he had widespread support among blacks who believed that Kennedy was more sympathetic to the cause of Blacks, than his opponent Richard Nixon. To test the President's commitment to civil rights, CORE proposed a new Journey of Reconciliation, dubbed as the "Freedom Ride". The Freedom Ride departed for Washington, DC on May 4, 1961. It was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, but met with stiff resistance.

President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights bill. To show that the bill had extensive support, civil rights groups united to organize a march to Washington. Organizers hoped to gather a crowd of 100,000 people but instead over 250,000 people from around the nation, in more than thirty special trains and 2,000 chartered buses arrived in Washington, DC on August 28, 1963. Numerous activists, artists, and civil rights leaders delivered speeches and songs. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered the closing address with his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The day turned out to be overwhelming success and was covered by the media. It did not have an immediate impact on Congress, President John F. Kennedy's civil rights bill was not passed for a year. It affected just about everyone, who participated or watched in some way or the other. A year later, when the bill was passed, it laid the foundation for a modern United States of America. Some of the events are as follows:

• In 1954, the Supreme Court of United States declared school segregation unconstitutional in the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka ruling, popularly know as the "Brown decision".
• In 1955, Federal Interstate Commerce Commission banned segregation on interstate trains and buses.
• In 1956, Coalition of Southern congressmen called for massive resistance to Supreme Court desegregation rulings.
• In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Rubus ordered the National Guard to block nine black students from attending a Little Rock High School. With respect to court order, President Eisenhower had to send federal troops to ensure compliance.
• In 1960, four black college students began sit-ins at lunch counters of a Greensboro, North Carolina restaurant where black patrons were not served.
• Congress approved voting rights act after a filibuster by Southern senators.
• John F. Kennedy gave green signal to the Freedom Ride which began from Washington, D.C.
• President Kennedy had to send federal troops to the University of Mississippi to stop riots so that James Meredith, the first black student at the university, could attend his classes.
• The Supreme Court declared segregation in all the transportation facilities as unconstitutional.
• The Department of Defense ordered full integration of military reserve units, excluding the National Guards.
• In 1963, Civil rights leader Medgar Evers was killed by a sniper's bullet.
• Race riots prompt modification of the martial law in Cambridge, Maryland.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.
• In 1964, the Civil Rights Act passed by the Congress, declared discrimination based on race illegal.
• Church bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, left four young black girls dead.
• In 1965, two civil rights workers were killed in Selma.
• Malcolm X, an African-American Sunni Muslim and a human right activist was assassinated while he was delivering his speech in New York.
• In 1965, the new Voting Rights Act was signed by President Lyndon Johnson.
• Edward Brooke of Massachusetts was elected as the first black U.S. senator in the 85-year long history of civil rights movement.
• In 1967, there was rioting in the modern automobile city of Detroit.
• Thurgood Marshall became the first Afro-American to be named as a Supreme Court judge.
• Carl Stokes from Cleveland and Richard G. Hatcher from Indiana were elected as the first black mayors of major U.S. cities.
• 1968 is supposed to be the worst year in civil rights movement when Martin Luther King, Jr. fell victim to the bullets fired by James Earl Ray in Memphis. James Earl Ray was convicted for the crime and sentenced to 99-year long imprisonment.

The most important figures of civil right movements are W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X , Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, who was the most romanticized personage in the Montgomery cast of characters. Thus, present-day America is a result of the blood and sweat of thousands of people who fought for freedom and equality. This struggle was not just to abolish slavery or to put an end to racial discrimination, but to construct a foundation stone for that boundary less world and create a community with a common faith and religion that is humanity. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw the dream and with Barack Obama being elected as President of United States, the dream was successful. In the same way, a single religion may be a distant dream today, but there stands a possibility. A possibility when people of all races and color would have a common faith. And this will be possible, even with huge intermixing between people with different races, irrespective of their caste, creed and religion. A vision, the world must start dreaming about and achieving!