The Civil Rights Movement Of The United States

1157 WordsDec 11, 20165 Pages
And by virtue of the power and for the purpose of the aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.” (CITE TEXT) It took just over 100 years for African-Americans to achieve the dream that Abraham Lincoln envisioned nearly a century before. During that time endemic racism led to wide scale organized social protests by black citizens and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (to be known as NAACP) across the United States, ultimately resulting in The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The signing of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was the first step in many historic protests and actions over the next 100 years that would eventually lead to both the Civil Rights and subsequently the Voting Act. This paper will examine some of the more notable incidents and protests that helped define the Civil Rights Movement. One of the first major events on the journey towards The Civil Rights Act was Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas. On 17 May 1954, the NAACP, on behalf of Linda Brown, a third-grade student in Topeka Kansas, won a ruling in the Supreme Court which stated that “separate but equal” schools for segregated students was unconstitutional. (cite retrospective here) This ruling gave
Open Document