The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. quite correctly named the civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century the Third American Revolution. Though it is most often attributed to the 1960s the civil rights movement found it’s start in the decade before that, the ‘peaceful 50s’. The civil rights movement actually started with legal battles before moving into the streets of American cities. The Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of schools with “all deliberate speed” and overturned it’s former “separate but equal” policy that had for so long been the law of the land. This led to the tokenism that MLK decried, and it also led to the realization that there wouldn’t be equal rights gained through the courts alone, they had to take their stru
Ultimately the goals of the civil rights movement were quite simple. They wanted to end discrimination, to become accepted as American citizens with all the rights, duties and privileges that entails. They wanted the power to become whatever they wanted in life, to not be held back by mere melatonin but instead be accepted everywhere by everyone as a fellow human being, regardless of race.
Slowly but surely the small pocket of “dissidents” turned into a nationwide movement that reshaped the way the constitution was interpreted and tried to help make sure that all men really were created equal. Even the killings of important persons like MLK, Medgar Evars, and Malcolm X couldn’t stop the flow once it had been released. The men became martyrs to the c
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