civilrightsmovement英语课展.ppt

The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) refers to the reform movements in the United States, particularly in the South, aimed at abolishing racial discrimination of African Americans. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged and gradually eclipsed the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from White domination. Many of those who were active in the Civil Rights Movement, with organizations such as NAACP, and SCLC, prefer the term “Southern Freedom Movement“ because the struggle was about far more than just civil rights under law; it was also about fundamental issues of freedom, respect, dignity, and economic and social equality. In the 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was involved in the struggle to end segregation on buses and trains. In 1952 segregation on inter-state railways was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was followed in 1954 by a similar judgment concerning interstate buses. However, states in the Deep South continued their own policy of transport segregation. This usually involved whites sitting in the front and blacks sitting nearest to the front had to give up their seats to any whites that were standing. African American people who disobeyed the states transport segregation policies were arrested and fined. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailors assistant from Montgomery, Alabama, who was tired after a hard days work, refused to give up her seat to a white man. Rosa Parks having her fingerprints taken after her arrest on 1st December, 1955. After her arrest, Martin Luther King Jr., a pastor at the local Baptist Church, helped organize protests against bus segregation. He was joined by other campaigners for civil rights, including Ralph David Abernathy, Edgar Nixon and Bayard Rustin. The group was persuaded by JoAnn Robinson, of the Womens Political Council, that they should launch a bus boycott. The idea being that the black people in Montgomery should refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued. For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a decision by the Supreme Court on 13th November, 1956, forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration. The following month the buses in Montgomery were desegregated. Two great black leaders in the movement against racial discrimination “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people,“ said Rosa Parks on the occasion of her 77th birthday. And so she is. Parks, known as “the mother of the civil rights movement,“ walked into history on December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat for a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Parks was arrested for her defiance, and she agreed to challenge the segregation order in court. After this tactic failed, Parks and others organized the Montgomery bus boycott: “For a little more than a year, we stayed off those buses. We did not return to using public transportation until the Supreme Court said there shouldnt be racial segregation.“ Parks and others lost their jobs, and she was harassed and threatened. The boycott held, and an important corner was turned in the movement. Parks and her family eventually moved to Detroit, where she worked for many years for Congressman John Conyers. She founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self- Development to offer guidance to young African- Americans in preparation for leadership and careers. Milestones of Martin Luther King Jr. 1955 Organizes the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which led to a Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation on all public transport. 1957 Founds the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize black churches in conducting nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. 1963 Delivers “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to over 200,000 civil rights supporters. 1964 Becomes the youngest man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1964 Organizes marches that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in education and employment. 1965 Rallies outrage following Bloody Sunday, a march from Selma to Montgomery that turned violent after police used force against demonstrators. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 1966 Takes the movement North and moves his family into the Chicago slums to demonstrate support and empathy for the poor. 1968 Mr. King is assassinated in Memphis during a visit to support striking black garbage collectors. 1986 Martin Luther King Day established as a United States holiday Today, through the efforts of his late wife Corettta Scott King and the legions of others