Can anyone describe the role civil disobedience played in the Civil Rights Movement?

Answer 1

In the last decade of the nineteenth century in the United States, racially discriminatory laws and racial violence aimed at African Americans began to mushroom. This period is sometimes referred to as the nadir of American race relations. Elected, appointed, or hired government authorities began to require or permit discrimination, specifically in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Kansas. There were four required or permitted acts of discrimination against African Americans. They included racial segregation – upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 - which was legally mandated by southern states and nationwide at the local level of government, voter suppression or disfranchisement in the southern states, denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. Although racial discrimination was present nationwide, the combination of law, public and private acts of discrimination, marginal economic opportunity, and violence directed toward African Americans in the southern states became known as Jim Crow.


March on Washington for Jobs and FreedomNoted strategies employed prior to the Civil Rights Movement of 1955 to 1968 to abolish discrimination against African Americans initially included litigation and lobbying efforts by traditional organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These efforts were the distinction of the American Civil Rights Movement from 1896 to 1954.

However, by 1955, private citizens became frustrated by gradual approaches to implement desegregation by federal and state governments and the "massive resistance" by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, these citizens adopted a combined strategy of direct action with nonviolent resistance known as civil disobedience. The acts of civil disobedience produced crisis situations between practitioners and government authorities. The authorities of federal, state, and local governments often had to act with an immediate response to end the crisis situations – sometimes in the practitioners favor. Some of the different forms of civil disobedience employed include boycotts as successfully practiced by the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) in Alabama, "sit-ins" as demonstrated by the influential Greensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina, and marches as exhibited by the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama.

Noted achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in this area include the legal victory in the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case that overturned the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" and made segregation legally impermissible, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations, passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that restored voting rights, and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

By 1966 the emergence of the Black Power movement (1966-1975) began gradually to eclipse the original "integrated power" aims of the Civil Rights Movement that had been espoused by Martin Luther King Jr. Advocates of Black Power argued, and have generally continued to argue, for black self-determination, and to assert that the assimilation inherent in integration robs Africans — which includes all Afro-ethnic peoples the world over, including African-Americans; see pan-Africanism — of their common heritage and dignity. For instance, the theorist and activist Omali Yeshitela argues that Africans have historically fought to protect their lands, cultures and freedoms from European colonialists, and that any integration into the society which has stolen another people and their wealth is actually an act of treason.

Today, most Black Power advocates have not changed their self-sufficiency argument. Racism still exists worldwide and it is generally accepted that blacks in the United States, on the whole, did not assimilate into U.S. "mainstream" culture either by King's integration measures or by the self-sufficiency measures of Black Power — rather, blacks arguably became evermore oppressed, this time partially by "their own" people in a new black strata of the middle class and the ruling class. Black Power's advocates generally argue that the reason for this stalemate and further oppression of the vast majority of U.S. blacks is because Black Power's objectives have not had the opportunity to be fully carried through.

Answer 2

This is an interesting question because what happened in the civil rights movement was not exactly civil disobedience, which is usually thought of as breaking the law to serve some higher moral purpose or to get the law changed. Much of what was called civil disobedience was actually violating local laws or customs that were themselves illegal. For example, the Supreme Court said that school segregation was unconstitutional in 1954, but schools were still segregated for years after that. Laws and constitutional amendments were passed after the Civil War that were supposed to prevent discrimination and guarantee blacks the right to vote, but blacks were still discriminated against and denied the right to vote for another hundred years. So you could argue that the civil rights protesters were actually trying to enforce the law, and the local sheriffs who were locking them up were actually the ones disobeying the law. Governor Wallace standing on the steps trying to prevent blacks from going to college was actually the one committing civil disobedience, and federal officers eventually forced him to stand aside. But civil rights protestors trying to register black voters, or sit at lunch counters were actually trying to end a system of segregation that was unconstitutional.

In response to the post above, I don't see how you could call the Montgomery bus boycott civil disobedience. There was no law that required people to ride the bus, and the black community was legally entitled to decide not to ride the buses. Once the case made its way through the courts, it was determined that it was the bus company that was acting illegally by forcing black people to move to the back of the bus. The boycotters were not doing anything illegal.

It's also important to remember that because we have a federal system, there are times when state or local laws are contrary to federal law. Sometimes you have to break the state law to enforce the federal law. This happened all the time during the civil rights movement.

Answer 3

Read "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr:

http://www.historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=40

Here is a website that explains the answer to your question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

Answer 4

Yes

Answer 5

it started it. Rosa Parks refusing to relinquish her seat to a white.