Civil Rights Legislation and the Return of Status - Essay Example

In 1960, students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Their mistreatment was televised to the nation and prompted reflection. Also in North Carolina, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded at Shaw University to give black students direction in the civil rights movement.

3 1963 was an active year on the Civil Rights timeline. Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed. There, he wrote his famous "Letter From the Birmingham Jail," voicing the familiar argument that it was a moral duty to disobey unjust laws. In May, Birmingham officials unleashed fire hoses and police dogs on black protestors, once again televised for the world to see. The Lincoln Memorial was the congregation point of 200,000 who joined the March on Washington, where King spoke his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Violence continued in the streets of Birmingham when four young girls were killed in an explosion at the Sixteenth Baptist Church, the location of several civil rights meetings.4 Progress came in the form of the 24th Amendment in 1964, which abolished a poll tax designed to block blacks from the ballot boxes. Also that year, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, barring discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. Sadly, the summer ended with the murder of three civil-rights workers who had been working to sign up black voters.

5 Though riots in Watts and elsewhere were an ugly mark in 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act that year to squelch literacy tests and other screenings designed to exclude black voters. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, giving life to the notion of "affirmative action." The following year, Stokely Carmichael brought the idea and phrase of "black power" to prominence, and the Supreme Court found that states could not ban interracial marriage.6 1968 was a nightmarish year for America.

Although Johnson continued his legislative support of civil rights with the Civil Rights Act of 1968, barring housing discrimination based on race, the year is best remembered for the assassination of Martin Luther King as he stood on the balcony of his hotel room.7 In many ways, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s recaptured some of the social and political status blacks had briefly held after Reconstruction. Both periods feature strong legislative hands in addressing social change, through the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and Freedmen's Bureau in the 19th century, to the civil rights and voting rights acts of the 1960s.

Each period focused on a determination and belief in the power in the power of voting to make positive change. Huge numbers of blacks registered to vote in some Southern regions during Reconstruction; and voting drives would play a critical role in the movement of the 1960s, too. Strong black leaders helped show the way, from Hiram Revels to Martin Luther King. From legislation to voter mobilization, to inspired leadership, the black experience during Reconstruction and the 1960s share strong similarities.