The Civil Rights essays

The Civil Rights essays The Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movement The Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements of the 50s and 60s spawned several organizations that reflected various social moods and attitudes. Though all of the organizations/movements outlined in this paper shared the common goal of racial equality for African Americans, their platforms, organizational structure, and relationships to the community at large differed greatly. The popularity of a particular organization or aspect of the movement seemed to be greatly influenced by the environment and moods of the African-American community in that particular environment. In the industrialized North, where racism was more systematic and covert, African-Americans tended to embrace more extreme ideologies for resistance such as rioting, separatism, and self-defense; while in the agricultural South, where racism was more overt and often deadly (Jim Crow laws and KKK terrorism), African Americans seemed to embrace more passive forms of resistance such as marches, sit-ins, and boycotts. In this paper, we will examine civil rights/black liberation organizations, their similarities and differences, and how the collective behaviors of their membership were directly related to the social climate of the time. In southern states, African-Americans had experienced a great deal of racial violence since the end of the Civil War. By the 1950s, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, and other southern states had literally witnessed (and in some case endorsed) the lynching of thousands of African-Americans. Church bombings, voter terrorism, and cross burning were the normal consequence for many blacks who were simply attempting to exercise basic human rights. In time, many blacks grew to fear the system that when challenged, could certainly mean death for whoever would be the voice of dissent. Despite this hostility, however, the African American community continued to resist racism. M...