Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Supreme Court held that separate but equal was a legitimate stance under American law, essentially codifying human beings into different racial categories like a caste system, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. In short, America was a nation founded upon a paradox. It idealized freedom and personal choice, yet it also was based upon a system that did not allow a substantial percentage of the population to exercise that freedom and enjoy in their liberties.
The Civil Rights movement was so radical, because it demanded that the promise of American freedom finally be truly realized and granted to Black Americans, which America was unwilling to do, until African-Americans demanded their rights through this eloquent and articulate protest movement. Sadly, the damage of hundreds of years of slavery had taken their psychological and economic toll upon some Black Americans. One of the saddest aspects of reading Brown v. Board of Education is to read how Black children had internalized societal messages of racism to such a degree that they often preferred images of White rather than Black children. The reason for Malcolm X's vehemence against American...
This sad, shameful fact and the pervasiveness of Jim Crow long after America proudly proclaimed the nation a tolerant, liberal democracy must not be forgotten. Today, all of America pauses and acknowledges the greatness of Martin Luther King, Jr. On a day that is observed as a holiday, but the FBI conducted surveillance of this great man during the 1960s and the 1970s, because to call for justice was equated with suspicion in the eyes of the American government.
It is important to remember all of these facts when evaluating the success of the Civil Rights movement because Black Americans have become so prominent, from Spike Lee in American films, to Senator Barak Obama from Illinois in politics, it is easy to forget how far Black Americans have come, and how hard the struggle was that they had to endure, simply to be regarded as human beings, much less capable human beings of dignity and talent. Of course, much still has to be done to rectify the injustices done by slavery, but at least the problems have been acknowledged, as has the potential of Black Americans for greatness.
Works Cited
Major Problems in American History Since 1945. Third Edition.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
