Black civil rights
Black civil rightsThe quest for equality by black Americans played a central role in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. Stemming from an effort dating back to the Civil War and Reconstruction, the black movement had gained more momentum by the mid-twentieth century. African Americans continued to press forward for more equality through peaceful demonstrations and protests. But change came slowly indeed. Rigid segregation of public accommodations remained the ruled in the South. In the North, urban ghettos grew, as the growth of blacks grew. Crowded public housing, poor schools, and limited economic opportunities fostered serious discontent. In the North and South alike, consciousness of the need to combat racial discrimination grew. Support bubbled up from different social groups. Young people in particular, most of them students, enlisted in the effort to change restricted patterns deeply rooted in American life. The Black Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 60's was a political, legal and social struggle of the black americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality.
In 1962, the civil rights movement accelerated. James Meredith, a black air force veteran and student at Jackson State College, applied to the all-white University of Mississippi and rejected on racial grounds. Suing to gain admission, he carried his case to the Supreme Court. An even more violent confrontation began in April 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, where local black leaders encouraged Martin Luther King,Jr., to launch another attack on the southern segregation. Forty percent black, the city was rigidly segregated...
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