The African American Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968: A Second Reconstruction

The movement of the American people that effected change during the American civil rights years is the African American civil rights movement of 1955 to 1968. This normally refers to reform movement in United States that had the aim of abolishing the ongoing racial discrimination of the African Americans. This is the period particularly in between 1954-1968 that covers the phases of movements in the south.

By the year 1966 the black power movement had emerged that lasted approximately in between 1966 to 1975, this movements had grown in large sizes and had realized the need for civil right movement to include political and economic self sufficiency, racial dignity and freedom from the on going white authority. There are many scholars who term the movements as the second reconstruction, meaning that the period of reconstruction after civil war. In 19th century, the democratically controlled states that were mainly located at the south passed laws that were racially discriminating.

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It was not particularly I the south, but also in other regions of the United States, the racial discrimination and violence that aimed at the African Americans. The period is also called the nadir of American race relations sometimes; this is because the hired, appointed and the elected government officials began to permit or allow discrimination the united states of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, florid, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The permitted or required acts and levels of discriminations against the African Americans mostly fell in the following four categories: Racial segregation that was upheld by United States supreme courts decisions in Plessey versus Fergusson in the year 1896. That was legally allowed by the southern states and many other local governments that were outside the south. Voter suppression in most of the southern states. Discrimination against the economic and social opportunities or the resources in the whole of the United States. 4. Mass racial acts of violence and private work of violence that was aimed to the African Americans, all these acts were seldom hindered and often encouraged the government official of the United States.

Jim Crow was the name given to the combination of the southern states that were actively committed to the racial discrimination. The regime of Jim Crow in the southern states remained nearly intact up to the near the beginning of 1950s and greatly contributed to the great migration. The great migration was a solid northward flow of the African Americans forwards. The situation, in terms of racial discrimination, for the African Americans was some how better for those who did not live in the south. The civil rights movements that came before 1955 normally confronted African Americans discrimination using various strategies.

Some of the strategies were lobbying and litigation efforts by organization that were traditional such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The greatest achievement of this traditional association was the lawful victory in brown versus board of education (1954) that overruled the separate and installed equal legal doctrine and was derived from Plessey, this made separation and segregation lawfully unallowable but there was rare or no practical example from the equal legal doctrine.

The browns victory made the private citizen very invigorated but there was a lot of frustration because there were no immediate practical effects. This further led to rejection of the legal approaches as a mean of ending the racial discrimination, but still there was great resistance by the proponents of voter suppression and those of racial segregation. In defiance, there was adoption of a combination of strategies of direct actions that was called civil disobedience that was a non violent, these actions brought about a lot of crisis between the practitioners and the government authorities.

The state, federal authorities and the local authorities had often to respond instantly to the crisis and the results were favoring of the practitioners in many situations. The noted achievements of the civil right movements includes the 1957 civil right act, though it was minor, it was the earliest anti discriminatory law established since reconstruction, the 1964 civil rights act that banned the discrimination in public accommodation and employment practices, the 1965 voting right act that changes the united states immigration policy and the 1968 civil rights act that made it illegal in discrimination in rental or sale of housing.

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