Key Events in the Civil Rights Movement Essay -- Civil Rights Equality

The Civil Rights Movement started with The Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Boycott officially started on December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks was an Educated women and she attended the laboratory school at Alabama State College. Even with that kind of education she decided to become a seamstress because of the fact that she could not find a job to suit her skills. Rosa Parks was arrested December 1955. Rosa Parks Entered a bus with three other blacks and sat on the fifth row. The fifth row was the first row the black could occupy. After a few stops later the rows in front of them where filled with whites. According to the law at the time blacks and whites could not occupy the same row. There had been one white man left with out a seat. The bus driver had told the four to move so the white man had a place to sit. The other three that was with Rosa Parks had moved. Rosa Parks however did not. She refused and was arrested. E.D. Nixon post bond for Rosa Parks. He told her that with her permission they could break segregation from buses with her case. Jo Ann Robinson made flyers and distributed them with her students. The flyers urged people to stay off the buses on Monday the day Rosa Parks case was due. Martin Luther King, Jr. a minister thought that if they could 60 percent of the blacks to stay off the buses the boycott would be a success. Martin Luther King Jr. thought he saw a miracle when he saw bus after bus pass his house with no blacks in them. That night they had called a meeting him and other ministers and blacks of the community which they called there self (MIA) Montgomery Improvement Association. They elected King the president of the group. They had a decision to make whether or not to continue with boycott or not. Then E.D. Nixon rose to speak: ?What's the matter with you people? Here you have been living off the sweat of these washerwomen all these years and you have never done anything for them. Now you have a chance to pay them back, and you're too damn scared to stand on your feet and be counted! The time has come when you men is going to have to learn to be grown men or scared boys.? The MIA had then decided to let the people vote on whether or not to let the boycott continue or not. They held a mass meeting and it was obvious to see that they decided to continue with the boycott. When the boycott began no one had expected for it to ... ...a return to Montgomery, where the civil rights movement had started ten years earlier with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A few months later, blacks had reason to rejoice again. It was truly a day for celebration. On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. By 1969, 61% of voting-age blacks in America were registered to vote, compared to 23% in 1964. The Selma to Montgomery march clearly showed both how far American blacks had come and how far they still had to go. Ten years ago blacks could barley do anything and now they are equally treated how they are suppose to be. During the movement mainly great people died. The sacrifices they made help make America what it is today. The movement was from 1955-1965, those years where some of the hardest years for America. We overcome our differences and now everyone is equal. This report was based on The Civil Rights Movement. Websites http://www.mecca.org/~crights/cyber.html http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html Books Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement