Black Movement African Americans have been fighting for their rights since the passing of the 13th (Freedom), 14th (Citizenship), and 15th (Voting Rights) Amendments. All they wanted to do is live their lives as free people and have the same equal rights as the whites. Instead they were treated as second class citizens to the whites. After the Reconstruction era, Jim Crow laws were put in place to keep African Americans segregated from whites. They had separate areas from the whites on public transportation (sat in back of bus), restaurants, drinking fountains, prisons, cemeteries, hospitals, train cars, buses and schools, which they of not equal quality as the white areas. African Americans were denied social, economic, and political benefits.
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King started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group of black ministers and activist which coordinated and supported nonviolent direct tactics as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. It expanded its concentration to ending all forms of segregation. Ella Baker, organizer of SCLC, helped the youth start the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The students in the committee staged “sit-ins” to desegregate restaurants and department stores. The first event occurred in Greensboro, NC where four black students set at the counter at a Woolworth’s five-and-dime store. News media of this movement spread throughout the South and the North that other black students facilitated similar protests. In Oakland, CA black and white students staged sit-ins at their Woolworth’s store as well as the Sheraton Hotel, Mel’s Diner, and the Housing Authority Office protesting them to hire more black workers and to integrate white neighborhoods (Bills). Despite being beaten, drug out, and arrested, the students never retaliated; they maintained their nonviolent policy. It was the efforts of the SCLC and SNCC that paved the way for the March on Washington, to demand higher wages and total equality. The march drew a crowd of at least 200,000 people to hear Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This speech touched the hearts of many people all over the nation. It gave African Americans hope that change was coming and that there will be racial
King started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group of black ministers and activist which coordinated and supported nonviolent direct tactics as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. It expanded its concentration to ending all forms of segregation. Ella Baker, organizer of SCLC, helped the youth start the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The students in the committee staged “sit-ins” to desegregate restaurants and department stores. The first event occurred in Greensboro, NC where four black students set at the counter at a Woolworth’s five-and-dime store. News media of this movement spread throughout the South and the North that other black students facilitated similar protests. In Oakland, CA black and white students staged sit-ins at their Woolworth’s store as well as the Sheraton Hotel, Mel’s Diner, and the Housing Authority Office protesting them to hire more black workers and to integrate white neighborhoods (Bills). Despite being beaten, drug out, and arrested, the students never retaliated; they maintained their nonviolent policy. It was the efforts of the SCLC and SNCC that paved the way for the March on Washington, to demand higher wages and total equality. The march drew a crowd of at least 200,000 people to hear Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This speech touched the hearts of many people all over the nation. It gave African Americans hope that change was coming and that there will be racial