Legislation of Civil Rights in the 1960’s :: Racism, Civil Rights, Discrimination

The issue of civil disobedience is as old as Socrates and as modern as Nelson Mandella. It is such an important issue today because the civil rights revolution is an attempt to seek new tactics of social and political reform. At the time of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was described as the most significant piece of legislation to be passed by the U.S. Congress in the twentieth century. The legislation resulted in ending virtually overnight legal racial segregation of black Americans in the American South. This territory was a place where public segregation of blacks from white Americans had been categorized in state laws. Many of those who participated in the congressional enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 understood the enormous historical significance of the doctrine. History In 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia a Dutch ship sailed into the harbor with twenty African slaves. These slaves were brought from Africa used to profit the southern United States. They provided a cheap and reliable source of labor. The America north was more of an industrial area and the use of slaves was less useful. Throughout the 1800’s the north and the south drifted apart on the issue. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed all slaves in the states that seceded from the Union. After the Civil war, three amendments to the Constitution were made, the 13th, 14th and 15th. These amendments abolished slavery, gave blacks the right to life, liberty and property, and the right to vote. In the Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson the court ruled blacks separate but equal. This continued racism spurred early civil rights movements and the creation of the new organization of the National Association for the Advancement o f Colored people(NAACP). In the years that followed around 1962-1963, the south was the site of confrontations between black demonstrators and segregationist whites. The Civil Rights Act to the Supreme Court Many feel that Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolent demonstrations to deliberately provoke attacks from violence prone white southern officials and white mobs. Whether or not King used this strategy his efforts resulted in the mass media coverage he needed. The civil rights movement became one of the largest publicized events in U.