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... saying that segregation was wrong, (later loss of this support devastated the movement). In the minds of the protestors this would be the answer to their oppression, not realizing the depth of their trouble. After the huge victory in Birmingham, the SCLC wanted to next focus their efforts on a voter rights bill. The SCLC was getting deeper and deeper into the southern white mans beliefs set forth on them by the Civil War and slavery. They werent asking to ride next to the white man, nor eat next to the white man, but to have equal power with the white man.
This should already have been the truth, but sadly it wasnt. Blacks were discouraged from voting. For instance they would be deterred by slow service, odd courthouse hours, excessively difficult literacy tests, and, of course, the threat of violence. Selma would be the place to set their drive toward the right to vote. It provided everything that made a media event, which was needed to get national support. It had a segregationist mayor, a Klan affiliated police chief, and a very low percentage of blacks registered to vote.
Of 30, 000 people, slightly more than half were black, but only 350 blacks were registered. The SCLC started this campaign off of the high of Dr. King winning the Nobel Peace Prize, which was a victory for all of the Civil Rights Movement. The campaign was extremely brutal, starting on the evening of the 18 th of February when a protest march headed for the jail in the town of Marion, when it was attacked by a mob of whites. The streetlights mysteriously shut off and violence commenced in the dark. A young black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson was beaten and shot and killed by state troopers as he tried to protect his grandfather and mother from a trooper attack on civil rights marches.
The violence was slowly getting worse, showing a greater desperate attempt for the white mans oligarchy to stay intact. It was ridiculous for the chauvinists to believe that violence would overcome the black fight, not knowing it was feeding the SCLC tactics of nonviolence. This tactic was when protestors used their passive physical presence to provoke violence from authorities and thus the sympathy of a national audience. This tactic was the key to almost every victory of the Civil Rights Movement. The brutality continued when a march from Selma to Montgomery met up with 60 state troopers along with some civilians. The troopers asked them to stop, once, then attacked with teargas, clubs, whips and electric cattle prods.
These violent images inspired protests in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, Newark, and other cities, and caught the attention of the White House. This proved the tactic of nonviolence was extremely successful in obtaining a national audience. Selma led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President Johnson signed into law in August. The legislation prohibited the kind of tactics that had been used in Selma to hinder black voter registration, also giving the federal government more power to police local instances of abuse. Selma unfortunately marked the final stage of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a major gain obtained by nonviolent direct action.
After Selma, the SCLC changed their focus. Encouraged by Watts, a huge riot in L. A. , over police brutality and poor living conditions, the SCLC turned their attention toward the northern cities. The cities were suffering from something far different then the SCLC had been fighting for earlier.
This problem of poverty was brought on by a lack of decent jobs for blacks, due to racism, but not a particularly visible sign of racism. It was like a quagmire of poverty, extremely difficult for a person to work their way out of the ghetto. The SCLC lost national support, including the Johnson Administration, which would go no further with federal legislation. What they were now asking for was a redistribution of the nations wealth. To do this without giving up a lot of what the main populace personally had worked for is difficult to do without turning this into a socialist, or even communist government; which was obviously very unpopular, from the McCarthy hearings, and we were also fighting a war against it in the Far East. The movement lost a lot of backing due to this.
The SNCC accused the SCLC that their strategies effectiveness decreased as racial violence increased. This attitude was embodied by Solely Carmichael's new battle cry of Black Power. The SCLC refused to endorse the slogan, fearing it would alienate white sympathy. This fight wouldnt be concluded like the others with a signing of a bill or an agreement with business owners. It would take a long time to accomplish what they wanted. This fight was taken over by Rev.
Jesse Jackson. The issue that I believe finally broke the movement of the SCLC was Dr. King protesting the Vietnam War. He had spoken out against the war earlier, but as it had escalated, and was taking an increasingly disproportionate number of black lives, it appeared more and more a war of capitalists against peasants. Dr. King became bitterly vocal.
Dr. King became a kind of Christian socialist from the influence of the war and the conditions of the cities, concerning himself with campaigns aimed at a redistribution of American wealth. SCLC was making enemies faster than ever before. Now it was not just the racist southerners, they were also stepping on the feet of the president, who was once a supporter, and also many northern white middle class, and Vietnam War supporters.
I believe Dr. Kings biggest enemy though would have to be the FBI, who had been harassing and illegally wiretapping the SCLC throughout the movement and accusing them of communist affiliation. It all ended on the evening of April 4, 1968. After a pre-dinner organizational meeting, Dr. King stepped onto the balcony of his second floor motel room.
A few moments later King was shot in the neck, killing him. This assassination not only killed Martin Luther King Jr. , but also the strongest influence of social justice, the leader of the SCLC, and millions of peoples hope for justice. The alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, was apprehended a month later in Heathrow Airport in London. He confessed to the killing, but there is much speculation of a conspiracy.
The FBI might have been involved in Kings death, (hence his biggest enemy). Kings death did not prevent further drive for civil rights, but the next drive to Washington D. C. was unsuccessful. A few months after this in Washington, Andrew Young resigned from the SCLC to make a bid for Congress, starting a whole new part of his life and dealing with racism from a different vantage point, ending his full time involvement in the fight to better his race.
The Civil Rights Movement was a huge leap forward for the betterment of all races. Countless people have sacrificed their lives for this fight. Forty lives have been tied to the movement from 1955, starting with the murderer of Rev. George Lee, and ending with Dr. King in 1968. There is most likely many more.
These numbers do not include the thousands of people of all colors beaten down for their beliefs in social equality. These numbers also do not include the millions of black people impoverished for generations to come from the lack of opportunity for them now. There is a long way to go to stop our biased society and unite all races, and to improve as one, not as classes, nor races. Bibliography: Works Cited Adams, Janus. Freedom Days. U.
S. : John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Fairclough, Adam. To Redeem the Soul of America. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
Higham, John. Civil Rights & Social Wrongs. University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. King, Martin Luther. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Warner Books, Inc. , 1998.
Norton. A People and a Nation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. , 1998. Quinn, Richard.
Jesse Jackson and the Politics of Race. Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1985. Role, Lloyd. Great Speeches.
Greenwood, Indiana: The Educational Video Group, 1988. Salley, Columbus. The Black 100. New York: Citadel Press, 1993. Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden.
New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 1996. Zinn, Howard. SNCC, The New Abolitionists. U. S. : Reginald Sanders & Co. , 1964.
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Research essay sample on Martin Luther King Jr Civil Rights Movement
