In my eyes, one of the most tragic and ridiculous events of the entire civil rights movement in the United States took place in Prince Edward County, Virginia, between 1959 and 1964. Probably you’ve not heard this story unless you’re familiar with the civil rights movement. But it says so much about racial hatred and […]
Category: Civil Rights Movement
Elizabeth Eckford & the Little Rock Nine
You’ve probably seen the photograph of Elizabeth Eckford, even if you didn’t know that was the woman’s name. In a way, it’s a chilling image. It, and the Little Rock Nine, remain a prominent feature in any history of the civil rights movement in the United States. Elizabeth Eckford, a young African American with large […]
The 1964 Civil Rights Act & Two Court Cases
If you have even a perfunctory knowledge of what happened during the Civil Rights Movement in the US, you remember the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The purpose of the act was to end segregation in public places because segregation discriminated so heavily against African Americans living in the South. It also banned segregation in employment […]
Robert Moses and the Civil Rights Movement
Most movements have a moral philosophy that motivates participants, and the Civil Rights Movement was no exception. The idea of nonviolence espoused so eloquently by Martin Luther King, Jr., was the ethos underpinning much of the Black struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. Along with King, one of the movement’s best philosophical minds belonged to […]
The March on Washington Had Other Speakers
Most of us remember the 1963 March on Washington for one thing only—Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. If you’re like me, you went to school assemblies about this as a kid. You heard the speech, or at least some of the famous lines from it, about King’s dream for America. You […]
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner Murdered
June 21, 1964 witnessed one of the most chilling events of the Civil Rights Movement, the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were members of the civil rights group CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, and Andrew Goodman was a summer volunteer to help with their programs. On June 21, […]