Melanie Campbell
The civil rights era was a boisterous time of conflicting views, fighting for rights, and
-above all- change. There were many icons of the time that made their stand for what they
believe, and some that stood as the voice of those who never had one before. People like Martin
Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Andrew Goodman are prime examples of those
with the courage and leadership skills to speak up against what should be morally wrong to all
humankind. During this moving time, from 1954 to 1968, racism and segregation were running
amok as they sometimes even still do. Despite the fact that, by law, all American citizens are
supposed to be equal, there are also laws referred to as “Jim Crow Laws” that prevent the
equality of all American citizens due to their heritage and color of their skin. As a result of this
inspiring decade (and some) of motivational speakers and civil rights activists, laws such as the
Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act that turned, “Separate but equal” into simply
“Equal.”
The first to step up to the plate, the first domino to knock down the rest, and the one’s
whose silence spoke loud and clear was none other than Rosa Parks. To serve as a dedicated
member of the black community, she peacefully protested on a bus in honor of the Scottsboro
Boys. She had been on her way home after a long day of work when a white man came on the
bus; The “Whites only” section of the bus had been completely filled, and Parks was expected
(by law) to give up her seat on the bus for said man. Parks, exhausted and frustrated did not
move for the man, and was confronted by authorities that did not persuade her. She was arrested,
but not before inspiring the rest of the community on the bus to continue this sort of peaceful
protest that Parks seem to set off. This small move led to the Bus Boycott, a large movement
where hundreds and hundreds of African Americans refused to ride the bus until the bus
segregation laws were appeased. They eventually were over a year later, but this great movement
taught the community something: that they didn’t need to use violence or intimidation to get
what they deserve.
The Black Panther Party was another civil rights focused group that was founded by
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale as an act of self-defense. The group, obviously, became much
bigger than that and as more people joined, its message became more renowned, and they
became more power and influential as a whole. The party’s original purpose was to patrol
African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality; however, as
they grew and evolved, the Black Panther Party participated in gaining things like the exemption
of African Americans from the draft of and from all sanctions of so-cal...
