African American Contribution To The Civil Rights Movement

What was the movement in 20th century that changed racial tensions in America forever? The Civil Rights Movement was the social mobilization and unification of different social movements across the country whose goals were to ensure the racial equality that every African-American had the right to regardless of race. If it wasn’t for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, American and Global history would’ve certainly been different up to the present as it most likely inspired other types of reformation in different parts of the globe. This paper will discuss the way African-American women contributed to the movement since the 19th century to the end of the 1960’s. However, women were not allowed to have a voice heard in society at the time and were …show more content…
Locke argued that Truth was one of the few African-Americans of the time that fought for the abolition of slavery. Without her, it could’ve very well been possible that slavery may have been present for a much longer time. Truth fought not just on the foundation of race, but on the basis for sexism as well. However, the fight for the freedom of the slaves and racial equality vastly outweighed the fight against sexism as abolitionism was at its peak.1 However, the famous Seneca Falls Convention that addressed “women’s rights” was ideal in sense but didn’t achieve the reality African-American women wanted. The convention were mostly white women that originated from wealthy families and the issues of non-white women were omitted. Ironically, Locke agreed that the convention was based on the ideas of abolitionism in which the majority if not all major figures of that movement were blacks such as Fredrick Douglass.2 It was most certainly not the last time that the voices of African-American women were left …show more content…
Wells and Racism
By 1883, a woman named Ida B. Wells was an early civil rights activist that had more radical approach than the works of Mary Mcleod Bethune which tend to be less direct in the context of rape and racism. One of the incidents that sparked her to fight for civil rights was when she was forcefully escorted out of her seat from a white only section of the train in 1883.3 She soon became the co-owner of the newspaper known as Free Speech by 1889 that was in 
1- Mamie Locke. “Whose Lives Really Matter: The Invisibility of African American Women in the Political Discourse of the Black Lives Matter Campaign”. 18.