Thesis
For over about 30 years, it has been noted by many experts that there has been a great advancement towards the African American community. With many accrediting the American civil rights movement, which was considered to have helped improve the quality of life of the under represented minorities who mostly were many African American citizens.
This paper presents the summary of the success of the African American rights movement (1950-1970) which resulted to the passing of the Voting rights Act in 1965 bringing about a significant change in the American social political and cultural practices. The movement was started with the aim of eliminating racial discrimination of the African Americans (Carey 2009).
The success of the movement
African American Rights is term that has been used to refer to Civil Rights Movements, which described a series of events that ranged through the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s. Civil Rights Movements came to be described as the concept which brought about equality for the black Americans and people of other races in the United States of America (Herbert 1984).
The African Americans got involved with the movement in pursuit of equality and equal access to all subjects of American life. For a long time, the African Americans together with people from other cultures had been subjects to discrimination with the efforts of these local people in trying to ensure that the U.S. was in line with the ideals of the declaration of the independence of the American people including the amendment of the Fourteenth Amendment (Szulhan 2009).
The principle or policy of the movement was to stand for the basic rights which included the right to eat, live and study anywhere one chose to. The movement attracted thousands of people who participated in many different ways.
There are those who become leaders Martin Luther king Jr., Thurgood Marshall who made endless effort to win the historic case Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka when the court ruled in his favor stating that it was unconstitutional to have segregated schools among other great people like Andrew Jackson Young, Rosa Parks (Gretchen 2001).
In 1950, the African Americans sat only in certain parts of public buses in one incidence, Rosa parks was asked to give up her seat on a bus to a European. She refused claiming she had undergone a hard day at work and was tired and her refusal led to her arrest this resulted to too many people getting furious. It was during this era that the status quo was challenged (Dowd 2005).
In 1960, gradually the African Americans achievements begun to be recognized national as African American writers, musicians, actors got to find a way in which they shared their experiences to a multitude number of audience.
This is where the plat form for civil right movement was established which resulted to wave of change ending segregation practices and securing equal treatment for African Americans. The fundamental changes that took place in the 1960s led to African American being entitled to vote and the radical reforms were carried over in the 1970s (Smith 2003). One of the debated topics was that of women as change in the music and art industry begun to change.
It is noted that many African American were able to accomplish remarkable achievements in rights politics and music one great achievement recognized was when Steve Wonder a great African American musician won the Grammy award in 1973 as having the best album of that year. The first time a Grammy award was awarded to an African American following later many great achievements by great African American people (Wright 1999).
References
Carey, A. (2009). On the margins of citizenship: intellectual disability and civil rights in twentieth-century America. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Dowd, J. H. (2005). The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past. The Journal of American History, 15-102.
Gretchen, C. E. (2001). Dissent in Wichita: the Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Herbert, H. H. (1984). Black radicalization and the funding of civil rights: 1957-1970. Journal of social problems Vol.32, 1.
Smith, R. C. (2003). Encyclopedia of African-American politics Facts on File library of American history. New York, NY: InfoBase Publishing.
Szulhan, R. (2009). African American History Contemporary Achievements. New York, NY: Weigl Publishers Inc.
Wright, G. (1999). The civil rights revolution as economic history. The Journal of Economic History vol. 5, 45-96.