The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil rights was about gaining right for African Americans and Women. Many people in the north opposed the unfair treatment of African American. African Americans in the north had it much better, voted

freely, and discrimination was hardly noticeable.
The Thirteenth Amendment officially outlawed slavery, which freed thousands of slave, also outlawed any forced labor. But they weren’t exactly free they didn’t have full rights.

When the Civil War ended many southern states passed the black codes, which kept African Americans from keeping a certain job, limited their property rights and restricted them in many other ways. States government may not take an individual’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law. There were many cases where the supreme court ignored the interpretation of the fourteenth amendment. Last civil war amendments, means no state can take away a person’s voting rights on the foundation of race, color or previous enslavement.” Suffrage-the right to vote- to African Americans.” The Fifteenth Amendment only protected men in practice. Various states had the power to decide whether women could vote. The nineteenth didn’t guarantee women the right to vote. With Leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped the slow process of the suffrage of women. The nineteenth amendment protected the rights of women to vote in all national election and state election. The twenty-third amendment African Americans and were not the only citizens who were denied voting rights. Because the district is not a state, the people who lived there were initially allowed to vote in national elections. But the 23rd amendment changed that in 1961.

In the Fifteenth Amendment gave African Americans the right to vote. Most of the southern states had poll taxes, which was where they required voters to pay a sum of money before casting a vote. So many Africans Americans couldn’t afford the tax. And many poor Americans couldn’t vote either. But in 1964 the national government made it illegal in the national election, which was all due to the twenty-fourth amendment.

On August 23, 1963, there were over 200,000 people marching through Washington D.C. That was the day that Martin Luther King made the speech “ I Have A Dream.” Which change the world forever.

Many African Americans faced unfair treatment because of their race. African Americans and whites were separated in pubic places like schools. They even had to ride in the back of the bus even if the front of the bus was empty. This was all known as segregation. It took African Americans and women more that 100 years to gain their rights.

Many Americans were against the treatment of African Americans. “In 1909 a group of African Americans and whites founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)” they usually worked through courts to test laws and customs that denied African Americans their rights.

Then in 1910, more troubled citizens formed the national Urban League, which was formed to aid the growing number of African Americans in the cities like helping them find jobs. Millions supported the Civil Rights movement. In 1948 president Harry Truman put an end to segregation in the armed forces. The biggest success was when the supreme court made the decision of the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, which was to end segregation in public schools.
The National government came up with this program called Affirmative Action which was to make up for past discrimination. It promoted hiring of minorities and women. Colleges even practiced it too by helping minoritys go to college.

Every year there a 75000 complaints are filed in because of Racial discrimination in the workplace. “Some Americans even become victims of hate crimes because their race, color, gender, Sexuality, or disability. Personally I think that the civil rights movement was the best thing that could happen to America. We have one of the best countries in the world. And everybody that is in it make it what it is. Everyday you see that people still discriminate against everybody. I mean people will sit there and try to call white people racist, when I feel that half of the time white people are being discriminated by a lot of African Americans.