Civil Rights in the United States - Essay Example

This perception was the main reason to insist Hoover to use violence as a weapon to gain communists trust in the Civil Rights Movement. The origin of Civil Rights were established with a dual perspective in the wake of the Montgomery bus boycott, hoped to convince the students to join their organizations, as student branches or auxiliaries. It was in 1960s that under the influence of civil rights movement students chose to remain independent, establishing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which attracted hundreds of young men and women from across the country who were willing to risk their lives for freedom.

Following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, civil rights activists increasingly turned their attention from the rural South to the urban North, and toward economic opportunity. (Plummer, 2003, p. 222) By the late 1960s it no longer advocated nonviolence or stood under the emblem of black and white working together. Instead, it called for black power. While some perceived this shift as a dramatic rejection of its core principles, others contend that the call for black power was consistent with the front line role that SNCC had played since its birth and its insistence that the nation speed up the pace of change.

(Levy, 1998, p. 14) Civil Rights under Kennedy's era depicts the picture adopted as an organized approach, thereby attracting black southern support for his foreign and economic policies but Civil rights forces responded to Kennedy's lethargy by developing new ways to pressure him to live up to his promises. Most prominently, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) announced that it would stage a freedom ride. This was not it; to make matters worse, Mississippi, with its long history of execution, lay ahead.

The prospect of violence prompted the Kennedy administration to broker a deal with Mississippi whereby the governor promised to protect the riders from their moment of entry into the Magnolia State until their arrival in the state capital. In exchange, the Kennedy administration agreed to turn a deaf ear while state authorities whisked the riders from the buses ranging from trespassing to disturbing the peace. In spite of this deal, freedom riders kept traveling to Mississippi, knowing that they would end up in one of the worst prisons in the nation and they remained successful in marking important juncture in the Civil Rights.

(Levy, 1998, p. 45)With this much success in approving freedom from the government, one cannot ignore the efforts and role-played by media in promoting the concept of Civil Rights in United States by presenting several addresses of the leaders on civil rights. Like in 1963, it was due to the television media that President Kennedy delivered a major television address on civil rights, which is considered as one of the most powerful and important speech by a president on race relations since Reconstruction.

It was due to the speeches conducted and showed through media that the nation was motivated to follow the principle of equality and was committed to a "worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free". (Levy, 1998, p. 21) Women also not lagged behind and played a very prominent role in being recognized as Civil Rights freedom fighters. Women served as official representatives of local civil rights organizations and as behind-the-scenes