8 Features| February
the dream goes on
How the fight for racial equality has developed Natalie Delgado | staff writer Thatcher hoch | staff writer While the civil rights movement is in our textbooks with black and white photography, the decades-long struggle wasn’t that long ago. Then it was a fight for social justice and equal rights mainly for African Americans and today it's a continued fight for racial equality. After the civil war, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were supposed to guarantee equal rights for African Americans. Instead, black codes and Jim Crow laws maintained segregation between white people and people of color. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus. While 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was the first to be arrested for this “crime”, Rosa’s light skin and maturity made her a stronger strongspokes person for the movement. Soon after, the Atlanta minister Dr. Martin Luther King started to organize with the people and began by bus boycotting which led to the desegregation of buses. Dr. King soon became the face of the civil rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 all made strides during the movement. How were these advancements made possible? Social Studies teacher Magan Harrell says, “I would say
Ruby Bridges- Became the first black student to intergate an elementary school in the south at just six years old. Only one teacher would accept her as a student and it was her and that teacher that didn’t miss a day.
Claudette Colvin- On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus.
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education
1961: Black and white activists, known as freedom riders, take bus trips through the American South to protest segregation
September 4, 1957: Nine Black students known as the “Little Rock Nine” are blocked from integrating into Little Rock Central High School
the biggest thing is that they organized. They started to make a big difference because they had their meetings, even though they had to do it in secret, they had a plan, and things were thought out.” Across the south sit-ins, boycotts, and protests began popping up everywhere. Freedom riders boarded buses and protests were peaceful but met by violent force from police, something that today the protesters of Black Lives Matter are not unfamiliar with. Hand in hand, hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington and virtually everyone in America heard the “I have a dream speech”, 58 years ago. Dr. Martin Luther King said in his speech, “1963 is not an end, but the beginning.” While the civil rights movement legally came to a close after MLK was assassinated on April 4th, and the Fair Housing Act was passed on April 11th, 1968 the fight for change was not over. “Technically, I would say it didn't end, because the civil rights movement was a movement for racial equality and to end discrimination and systemic racism and social injustice, and we're still doing that. The movement hasn’t ended, it's just the name that has changed. It is an ongoing, constant movement,” said Harrell. In February 2012 Trayvon Martin
July 2, 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law
August 28, 1963: Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington
August 6, 1965: President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965
