Civil Rights In The Sixties

Submitted By Linny8477
Words: 1087
Pages: 5
Open Document
Civil Rights in the Sixties

HIS/145

John Lary

By Linsey Tisdale

Week two

Civil Rights in the Sixties

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a 17 minute speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to over 200,000 civil rights followers. This speech was polled in 1999 and ranked the top American speech of the 20th century. The King had a way of educating, inspiring, and informing people throughout the U.S. about civil rights. His speech was titled “I Have a Dream”, it is still one of the most well known speeches every given. The King would make sure to get his message across to the people and get news coverage at the same time.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.”
- “I Have a Dream”, August 28, 1963

Martin Luther King, Jr. has been described several ways by several people throughout the years. In 1964, his was awarded the Noble Peace Prize for helping to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience, becoming the youngest person to receive the award. The media never knew what time the King would arrive, but they could always count on him to make an appearance, which gave television crews their coverage for the evening news programs. King knew well before he started leading demonstrations that news coverage on the evening television programs was vital to move public opinion. The images of officers using dogs and hoses to assault helpless Blacks, women, and children the nation was furious getting Congress to pass the 1964 Public Accommodations Act. The civil rights movement brought attitudes and exercise to a stop in the South.

On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis to support the black sanitary public works employees; they had been on strike since March 12. They wanted better treatment and higher wages, instead of having to do without, like the whites. King spoke with the employee and then checked into his usually room 306. At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, King was standing on his 2nd floor Balcony when a shot was fired hitting him in the right cheek only to lodge in his shoulder. Martin Luther King, Jr. was labeled as dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. On April 4, King was shot to death by James Ray in his hotel in Memphis. President Johnson called a national day of mourning on April 7. In 1983 Congress declared the third Monday of every January Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Civil Rights in the Sixties

Public began putting pressure on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, after the television broadcasts and newspaper reports of the violence in Alabama when King was leading a voting rights drive. President Lyndon Johnson explained signing the bill into law as “one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom.” The Voting Rights Act ensured hundreds of thousands of Blacks the right to vote.

The media was always doing any and everything they could to find new information that would draw the public into the news programs. Southern Political figures would meet journalist at night, away from anyone that could identify anyone, to give the latest scoop on the Civil rights movement. Public exposure could put an end to Political figures future in culture. Some Blacks would plead guilty to a charge out of fear of the White panel of adjudicators. Before the 1960s, the press was content to cover civil rights as Top News instead of covering the difficulties Blacks had to face day in and day out.

Elijah Poole founded the Nation of Islam in 1931; he then changed his name to Elijah Mohammed. The movement
Show More

Related Documents: Civil Rights In The Sixties

Summary Of Chapter 8: Poison Dreams, Unpinned, 1960-1969

Americans looked up to was murdered, African Americans were still treated poorly during the sixties, a major leader of the Civil Rights Movement was also killed, and many people lived in poverty. The United States also were flying over a country and everyone soon became terrified. The sixties was a very troubling time period. The main social issue was the Civil Rights Movement in the south. The Civil Rights Movement was in full stride, the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended in the fifties, but blacks…

Words 883 - Pages 4

Freedom Singers Research Paper

Rock and Roll spoke to kids and told them it was ok to be different and rebellious (Candaele, Kerry. "The Sixties and Protest Music." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.). Artist like Bob Dylan used music to show his displeasure on the war of Vietnam (Candaele, Kerry. "The Sixties and Protest Music." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.). He wrote the song give peace a chance to say that instead of fighting and hating each…

Words 1058 - Pages 5

The Fight For Segregation Essay

The Fight for Segregation There are a lot of events that helped contribute to the Civil Rights Movement, through nonviolent marches, sit-ins, and boycotts, the African Americans received the fights that they had been fighting for. In my opinion, media was a large contribution to the Civil Rights Movement. “Between 1949 and 1969, the number of households in the United States with at least one TV set rose from less than a million to 44 million,”(Ganzel). Being able to simulcast the cruel inequalities…

Words 691 - Pages 3

Effects Of Counter Culture

for the hippies and another was music, but definitely not an ordinary kind of music. Many hippies were mostly musicians themselves. Music was influential for them. Rock and Roll from the fifties changed a lot during the sixties. It was just ‘fun music' before and during the sixties, the lyrics started to talk freely about all the things hippies wanted such as alteration in the society, or about drugs, free sex etc (Hollis). In 1969, almost 400,000 young people, many of them being hippies gathered…

Words 1928 - Pages 8

History: Apollo 11 and Martin Luther King Essay

The Scintillating Sixties [pic] [pic][pic] Rayne Krevetski Mrs. Cameron / Mr. Glennon English / History June 6th, 2012 Within the years of the sixties, people, events, and social aspects have changed the course of history. The sixties was a very exciting decade in the United States that changed the aspects of life and sciences. People like Martin Luther King Jr., the peaceful sixties counterculture movement, and famous events like the competition of the Space Race…

Words 1478 - Pages 6

Martin Luther King Jr Is Not Equal Essay

a minister as a father, which influenced him to become one later in life. King played a key role in the civil rights movement during the mid 1950s until he was assassinated in 1968. He gave one of the most well-known speeches in American History called “I Have a Dream”. His words and peaceful protests changed the views of countless Americans. Martin Luther King ,Jr., impacted the civil rights movement and influenced the society to change their ways. Early influences on King’s life inspired him to…

Words 977 - Pages 4

Eileen Cook Wk2B Civil Rights Essay

Civil Rights Week 2, Paper B Eileen Cook Listed below are Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and how they contributed to the Civil Rights Movement. President Truman ordered the desegregation of the military and antagonistically examined numerous high-profile lynchings, helping him in his presidency by winning sixty-five percent of the African-American votes in the year 1948. Truman also created another Executive Order in the same year, which made it illegal to discriminate against…

Words 479 - Pages 2

The Long Sixties Essay

‘The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama’ The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama is a book set in the current historical setting but dating its foundation in the 1960. The book is a political satire that displays the origin and growth of democracy in terms of how all ruling parties or factions are being divided in our society. Hayden creates a political picture that may shape the political perception of the current generation. In his book he challenges the current generation to appreciate…

Words 1148 - Pages 5

Summary Of Letter From Birmingham Jail By Martin Luther King

struggles that the Negro community was facing in the sixties and the impact that the Civil Rights movement had on American history any of the smaller struggles people were facing often get completely forgotten. Although, many of these so called struggles that the white community faced were about things that are not important. The Everly Brothers “All I Have To Do is Dream” proves the lack of struggle that white males faced in the early sixties. If we compare Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham…

Words 725 - Pages 3

Summary: The Freedmen's Bureau

emancipated men were successfully integrated, they could turn around and pay it forward. However, this failed because they were not enough jobs in the north for the freed slaves and so they stopped trying. The South was completely destroyed during the Civil…

Words 224 - Pages 1