Civil Rights Movement in America - Essay Example

Introduction

Civil rights are not natural rights. They are tied to the creation and operations (Dudziak, "Cold war civil rights"). According to Locke and other enlightenment thinkers who influenced the Founding Fathers, the government is created using a Social Contract(Dudziak, "Cold war civil rights"). The contract establishes a government to run civil society's affairs, maintain social order, and organize a collective defense against outside attacks. Moreover, since people surrender some natural rights to the state to do its job, a government's legitimacy rests on its ability to protect the other natural rights retained by its citizens.

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The United States fought a bitter civil war to abolish slavery(Dew,7-8). Some revisionist historians have tried and successfully repainted the Confederacy as a fight for states' rights. However, this is a lie(Dew,16). The Republic party was formed by the abolitionists' movement to put an end to plantation slavery. Abraham Lincoln was its first presidential candidate who ran on a platform of abolishing slavery in the entire United States. The Democrats ran on a promise to retain slavery. When Lincoln became the first Republic president of the United States, the Democrats formed the Confederacy, the Confederate Army and launched a pre-emptive military strike on Fort Sumpter.

Thankfully, the Union Army won the war and put an end to slavery. In the reconstruction era, the federal government desegregated southern society and granted freed slaves equal protection and benefit of the law(Proctor, "The KK Alphabet"). Unhappy, the KKK was formed as the military wing of the Democratic party to "keep the black population inline" ( Proctor, "The KK Alphabet"). When reconstruction abruptly ended, the Democrats took over the administration of the South and enacted Jim Crow laws that once again segregated southern society along racial lines. In Plessy v Fergerson's infamous case, the supreme court ignored the original meaning and intent of the Fourteenth Amendment(Luxenberg, "Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson"). It then declared the Jim Crow laws passed by Democrat-controlled legislatures in Louisiana; and, by extension, the rest of the United States to be a lawful exercise of state power. What followed were rights depriving non-whites of equal civil rights even if they were American citizens. For example, blacks had problems exercising their Second Amendment rights because Democrats passed gun control laws to prevent them from owning guns. Similarly, because blacks were likely to vote Republican, southern legislatures passed laws limiting the participation of non-whites in the political process.

The Civil Rights movement consequently emerged to advocate for Plassey v Fergerson's "separate but equal" doctrine to be overturned. Its founders were white liberals, clergy, and African American intellectuals like Booker T. Washington(Wood, "Hanging Bridge"). For example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NCAAP) was formed in 1909 by W.E.B Dubois, Ida B Wells, Mary Ovington, and Moorefield Story(Wood, "Hanging Bridge"). While the first two were black, Mary was a white feminist, and Moorfield was a white lawyer. After the second world war, the NCAAP's primary strategy became chipping away at Plassey v Fergerson using court cases (Wood, "Hanging Bridge"). Their first big blow against Jim Crow laws was the Brown v. Board of Education, decision by the Supreme Court that declared racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. When Democrat Governors refused to comply with the Supreme Court decision, President Eisenhower sent in the National Guard and the Department of Justice to enforce it.

With desegregation in public schools over, there was little to justify other forms of discrimination in different spheres of public life(Wood, "Hanging Bridge"). Republicans in Congress passed a series of civil rights laws that not one Democrat lawmakers supported. The Civil rights movement resorted to non-violent protests to push for equality, especially in voting, economic, and political rights. For instance, in March 1965, when demonstrators led by Dr. Luther King Jr. attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, they were met on Pettis Bridge by state police in protest of discriminatory voting laws and brutally beaten(Wood, "Hanging Bridge"). These events were televised on American and international televisions. It forced lawmakers to pass amendments to the Civil Rights Act that guaranteed equal voting rights for non-whites for two reasons. The first was that state police's images brutally beating non-violent protestors turned public opinion against Jim Crow laws that deprived non-whites of equal voting rights. Second, the United States was in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. There was a recognition in Washington that racial discrimination was a rich source of material for Soviet propaganda. The United States could not claim to be the free world leader and espouse liberal democratic ideals abroad but have racial apartheid at home(Dudziak, "Cold war civil rights").

Conclusions

Civil rights are not natural rights. They are tied to the creation and operations.

Works Cited

Dew, Charles, B. Apostles of disunion: southern secession commissioners and the civil war causes. University of Virginia Press,2017.

Dudziak, Mary L. Cold war civil rights: Race and the image of American democracy. Vol. 73. Princeton University Press, 2011.

Proctor, Bradley D. "The KK Alphabet" Secret Communication and Coordination of the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas." journal of the civil war era 8.3 (2018): 455-487.

Luxenberg, Steve. Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation. WW Norton & Company, 2019.

Wood, Amy Louise. "Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century. By Jason Ward." Journal of Social History (2019).