African American Civil Rights Assignment
Assess the effectiveness of the non-violent tactics used in the African American Civil Rights Campaign.
The African Americans were very successful in the way of demonstrating non-violent tactics in the same way Gandhi had used in India in the 1920s. Martin Luther King admired this example of Gandhi’s non-violent tactics and advocated a program of civil disobedience that used these methods. These included protests in the form of boycotts, demonstrations, sit-ins and marches which includes the famous ‘Montgomery Bus boycott’, ‘The 1963 March on Washington’ and ‘Bloody Sunday: Selma 1965’, which increased the national consciousness of the denial of civil rights to African Americans. These protests were always public and in large numbers which forced confrontation with the authorities. African Americans refuse to follow their orders and never physically responded to physical or verbal harassment. Through this moral decency influenced the people that the law is wrong. The main goal was to embarrass the authorities publicly so they see the wrongness and injustice in the issue being addressed. They want the people watching to feel sympathy for those protesting and to ask themselves what the real issue is. This was a major tactic used in the success in the civil rights for African Americans.
On 1 December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama a 42-year old African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person, which was against the law, and was arrested and sent to gaol by the police. In protest the African American community, who compromised 70 per cent of bus users in Montgomery, began a boycott of all buses in the city for 382 days. This tactic made bus companies face massive financial losses. The boycott demonstrated African Americans’ determination to take unified action in the fight for their rights and the extent of racism that existed within many southern communities. Martin Luther King took on an important role as president for
The African Americans were very successful in the way of demonstrating non-violent tactics in the same way Gandhi had used in India in the 1920s. Martin Luther King admired this example of Gandhi’s non-violent tactics and advocated a program of civil disobedience that used these methods. These included protests in the form of boycotts, demonstrations, sit-ins and marches which includes the famous ‘Montgomery Bus boycott’, ‘The 1963 March on Washington’ and ‘Bloody Sunday: Selma 1965’, which increased the national consciousness of the denial of civil rights to African Americans. These protests were always public and in large numbers which forced confrontation with the authorities. African Americans refuse to follow their orders and never physically responded to physical or verbal harassment. Through this moral decency influenced the people that the law is wrong. The main goal was to embarrass the authorities publicly so they see the wrongness and injustice in the issue being addressed. They want the people watching to feel sympathy for those protesting and to ask themselves what the real issue is. This was a major tactic used in the success in the civil rights for African Americans.
On 1 December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama a 42-year old African American woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person, which was against the law, and was arrested and sent to gaol by the police. In protest the African American community, who compromised 70 per cent of bus users in Montgomery, began a boycott of all buses in the city for 382 days. This tactic made bus companies face massive financial losses. The boycott demonstrated African Americans’ determination to take unified action in the fight for their rights and the extent of racism that existed within many southern communities. Martin Luther King took on an important role as president for