Martin Luther King Jr Civil Rights Movement Essay - 955 words

Returning from WWII, black Americans, just as those three decades prior, expected to find America a land of equality for all people and specifically a land endowed with increased black civil rights. Although the late 1940 's and 1950 's are not generally considered a period of social advancement for blacks, the decade and a half after World War II ultimately proved to be a very significant chapter in the history of black civil rights and a pivotal stepping stone for the drastic social uproar of the next decade. In 1950, America counted fifteen million black citizens, two thirds of whom still lived lives in the segregated south. Bound by rigid Jim Crow laws, the black view of life appeared bleak. Nonetheless, a period of increasing black civil rights was already underway.


Paving the way for the entire revolution was Jack Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson, the first black American to play major league baseball. Blacks had crept in America's national past time; more radical social changes were soon to come. Disenfranchised blacks finally found a leader dedicated to their cause in Harry S. Truman. After hearing of a lynching of black war veterans, Truman was suddenly tuned in to the heated crisis in the southland. Despite persistent tries to advance the cause of the blacks, Truman was repeatedly shot down by a conservative congress.


The boiling discontent felt by the blacks since the days of slavery could not be silenced so easily. The war had generated a new militancy and restlessness in the black community. Blacks increasingly voiced their opinions publicly and found many effective ways to advance their cause. The first such case came in 1944 when, after years of prodding by the NAACP, the supreme court ruled all-white primaries unconstitutional.


Following the landmark ruling, NAACP chief legal advisor, Thurgood Marshall, later a supreme court justice himself, successfully appealed to the supreme court that separate professional schools for blacks failed to meet tests of equality with their all-white counterparts. Discovering new ways to advance their lives, a revolution had begun. By far the most instrumental and powerful black leader in the entire civil rights movement was a prominent black minister, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Using the black church as base, King harnessed the most organized and powerful black organization in the country. A powerful orator and a devotee to the non-violent principles professed by India's Mohandas Ghandi, King enabled blacks to take the civil rights movement into their own hands. King's rise to prominence was catapulted by the Montgomery bus boycotts. After refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus, Rosa Parks' arrest sparked a year-long bus boycott that server to notice throughout the Deep South that blacks would no longer meekly admit to the indignities of segregation. Despite an arrest during the Montgomery boycotts, King emerged more dedicated to social equality. In 1957, King establis ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: black civil rights, earl warren, martin luther king jr, supreme court, civil rights movement

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