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The Civil Rights Movement: The Jim Crow Laws

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How would you feel if you were told that you couldn’t sit in the front of a bus or that you couldn’t dine in certain restaurants because of the color of your skin? The Civil Rights Movement refers to the political, social and economical struggle of African Americans to gain full citizenship and racial equality. The movement held many nonviolent protest against racial segregation and discrimination in America especially in the South during the 1950s and 60s. Although African Americans began to fight for equal rights during the days of slavery, the quest for equality is still going on today. Every since the European settlement whites enslaved and oppressed people of color. When the slaves were freed by the 13th amendment that abolished …show more content…
The enforcement of the Jim Crow Laws began shortly after the Reconstruction Era around 1890 and continued to be enforced until 1965. Starting in 1890 America came up with a “separate but equal” status for African Americans. The Jim Crow Laws were were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. This body of law institutionalized a number of economic, educational, and social disadvantages. In essence the Jim Crow laws were about power, power of one race over the other. These laws really highlighted the flaws and weakness of human nature. It was a group of people asserting power over another for the pride of a political system that was the cost of many American lives during the Civil War. One of the many court cases that was very important especially concerning the Jim Crow laws was the Plessy vs. Ferguson court case. Homer Plessy a man of mixed race (one eighth African descent) boarded a train in Louisiana that had a “whites only” sign. When he sat in the white section he was asked to get up and once he refused he was then arrested and put on trial. Plessy’s lawyers argued that the state law which required Louisana to segregate trains had denied him his rights under the 13th and 14th amendments …show more content…
The Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery Alabama. Because of the Jim Crow laws African Americans were forced to ride at the back of buses and were frequently ordered to give up their seat even though blacks made up 75% of the bus riders. The campaign started when a black woman by the name of Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on December 5, 1955. Even though this was the start of the boycott, Rosa Parks was not the first person to refused to give up her seat but because of her image she was chosen to be the face of the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott consisted of black people refusing to take the bus, instead they walked and some people carpooled with each other. Eventually the bus companies started to lose money because of the

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