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AMERICAN DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
Civil Rights Movement

Deyana Faraj

On the 4th of July 1776, 56 delegates to the Continental Congress signed a document that would not only declare independence of America from British colonial power but less than 200 years later, become the backbone of a new established America where the walls of discrimination and segregation would finally begin to deteriorate. The Declaration of Independence is a powerful document that has led to the development of equal rights and social justice within societies on a world context. More specifically, principles in this document were instrumental when argued by African American Civil Rights leaders in achieving equality and abolishing racial segregation and discrimination against African- Americans in the United States, during the African American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968).

Before the American Civil Rights Movement, laws known as Jim Crow laws had forced racial segregation of facilities and the prohibition of intermarriage. These laws were similar to the apartheid legislation and it became the law mainly in the south of America.
Where there is inequality and injustice within a government, the people of the nation demand change. Since the Jim Crow laws were enacted, the laws that mandated racial segregation in public areas and the prohibition of intermarriage in the Southern United States were socially and morally unjust and this fuelled the American civil rights movement as the African-American’s were seeking to achieve equality and be entitled to equal opportunities. This is an explicit pattern in the timeline of events in history where a disempowered group in society acts upon the injustice that they’ve had to endure over a long period of time.

Being segregated from public facilities alienated the African- Americans and