The Civil Rights Movement: America's Greatest Change Since 1945

Introduction: A Nation Transformed

During the 1950s, the NAACP fought for the right of African American children to attend the same public schools as white children in the South (252). It was considered a radical statement for Martin Luther King Jr. to proclaim the equality of all American citizens and to envision a future where Black and White children would join hands and sing of brotherhood and sisterhood (256). King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech before the Lincoln Memorial — a telling image of how the Civil War's promise of equality and justice for African Americans had yet to be realized.

Even the radical Black Muslim leader Malcolm X had idealized Whiteness to such a degree in his youth that he burned his own scalp with lye in order to straighten his hair and look more like a White man (251). Whiteness was desirable because it was associated with privilege, success, and social esteem, even in the eyes of many Black Americans. And yet, not so far in the future, a Black man in contemporary America declared his desire to become president and was taken seriously as a candidate for the Democratic nomination. Could even King or Malcolm X have dreamed that this would take place in 2007?

Why the Civil Rights Movement Stands Above Other Movements

While the struggle for women's rights, the countercultural movement, and other social movements of the 1960s would fundamentally restructure American society and change the way America looked at itself, nothing altered the political and social landscape as profoundly as the American Civil Rights movement. Before the women's rights movement, women still worked — though their labor was not always recognized — and great women scholars, authors, and professionals had already made their mark upon the American scene. One could also argue, furthermore, that the women's rights movement would have meant very little to Black women had it succeeded in its objectives while the Civil Rights movement had not. As for the countercultural movement, tensions between old and young generations have always existed, and the tactics of the anti-Vietnam counterculture — sit-ins and boycotts — were often direct imitations of techniques pioneered by the Civil Rights movement itself.

America Before the Civil Rights Movement

To understand the full impact of the Civil Rights movement, one must remember what America looked like before the movement made itself manifest in the 1950s. Black inequality was enshrined in the original U.S. Constitution in the form of the infamous three-fifths compromise, which declared that Black human beings counted as only a fraction of a White man. Slavery was permitted until the Confederacy went to war against the Union to protect its institution, waging the only civil war America has ever endured within its own borders. Although some historians argue that the war was fought over states' rights, the primary right the Confederates sought to preserve was the right to own Black men and women as property.

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, the Supreme Court held that "separate but equal" was a legitimate doctrine under American law, essentially codifying human beings into different racial categories akin to 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 was built upon a system that denied a substantial portion of its population the exercise of that freedom and the enjoyment of its liberties.

Works Cited

Major Problems in American History Since 1945. Third Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.