The Civil Rights Movement: Emancipation from Racial Discrimination - Literature review Example

(YOUR AND THE TAKEN) The Civil Rights Movement: Emancipation from Racial Discrimination The Civil Rights Movement in the United States during the 1950s up to the 1970s was the defining moments of the death of racial inequality in the country. After the Civil War, it seemed that the emancipation of slaves was not actually fulfilled because the white supremacists pressed for the inferior status of the African-American citizens. The system of Jim Crow was an obvious proof to the extent of discrimination that the black race had been experiencing.

Jim Crow, especially in the South, thrived in public institutions such as schools and transportation systems such as the local bus where the white race, favored and given utmost importance, was separated from the black race (Mooney 150). The history of the Civil Rights Movement traces its foundation through the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP in 1909 which staunchly fought against the race-based American education system in 1935.

A prominent African-American figure from the NAACP like Charles Houston, who held an editorial position in the Harvard Law Review, was an adherent of nearly all of the civil rights cases before the Supreme Court in the 1930s to the 1950s (Mooney 150). An important development in the Civil Rights Movement in terms of the public education system was manifested in the Brown vs. Board of Education case in the 1940s. A precursor to this case was the proclamation of California Governor Earl Warren to outlaw segregation in the state’s educational institutions in 1946.

This created the follow through of the aforementioned case that involved the assertion of Oliver Brown to enrol his daughter in a segregated school in Topeka, Kansas. Brown’s fight went through several court trials until it reached the Supreme Court in 1953. In March 17, 1954 under the new Chief Justice Earl Warren, the former California state governor and appointee of President Dwight Eisenhower, the Brown vs. Board of Education case achieved a remarkable success through the court’s unanimous decision to implement genuine equality in the country’s public education system (Mooney 151-152).

Similar to Brown’s experience can be seen in the case of the Little Rock Nine where in September 1957, nine African-American students pushed for their rights to study in a public school in Little Rock Central High School. Although the Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus supported the preservation of the segregated condition of the public high school, the hyphened situation in Little Rock forced the federal government to intervene through President Eisenhower’s directive that the nine be escorted by Federal troops into the school for them to exercise their right to education without any discrimination.

Unfortunately, the social tension inside the school with pertains to biases was prevalent (Mooney 154). Nevertheless, this example established the condition that the African-American society’s struggle for emancipation from racial discrimination had successfully reached the attention of the highest administrative seat. Together with the mentioned campaigns against racial discrimination were the collective mass movements of African-American citizens and white citizens who were supportive of the cause to end the distress between the whites and the blacks.

Martin Luther King, one of the major African-American mass leaders, marked the democratic struggle of the American people towards equality. Not only in the fields of education and relations in public spaces, King contributed for the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in the American Congress on August 6, 1965 (Mooney 158). This was a monumental feat in the Civil Rights Movement for it was in that day that the African-American society was emancipated from both social and political discrimination.

Works Cited Mooney, Mathew. American History: Researched and Written especially for SBCC History 100: Growth of American Civilization. N.p., n.d. Print.