Dbq Civil Rights Movement Analysis

In Montgomery there was a bus boycott that lasted thirteen months there. It was lead by Martin Luther King Jr. What lead up to the boycott starting was Rosa Parks being arrested. Nobody rode the buses but instead they walked even in the pouring rain, carpooled all over town and used taxis.

History, but is was longest. Prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Reverend T.J. Jemison lead a bus boycott in Baton Rouge, but it lasted only two weeks. In addition to the boycott in Baton Rouge, there were more bus boycotts, but they did not last long enough to make an impact. Many people had an impact on the movement before the Boycott 1955 such as Jackie Robinson, Emmett Till, and Harry Truman, who all either supported the Civil Rights Movement or were victimized by the harsh ways of racists. Also, leading up to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, many things sparked anger and frustration in African Americans such as widespread inequality, and extreme

This became known as the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Bus companies began to loose tons of money because whites even began to join in. Eventually, buses desegregated so they would start gaining the money they were losing.

According to Bernice Johnson Reagon in "The Civil Rights Movement" (Reagon, pages 598-623), music served as a source of inspiration, motivation, and solidarity among the activists and the African American community. "Freedom songs" were a central aspect of the Civil Rights Movement and were often borrowed from older African American spirituals, gospel, and blues music. One of the most famous examples of freedom songs is "We Shall Overcome," a gospel song transformed into a protest anthem. According to Soundtrack for a Revolution, "We Shall Overcome" became the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and was often sung at rallies, marches, and sit-ins. The song's message of hope, resilience, and determination was a source of inspiration for the activists and a symbol of the African American struggle for freedom.

Protest music was an effective tool used as a weapon in peaceful protest. Singers and songwriters would express their views through the lyrics of their songs, effectively spreading awareness and informing people about the changes that need to take place, and the ideas of peace over war. Protest music was a major contributor in the escalating support for the peace movements, as well as many other movements, against the horrors of the Vietnam War and increasing acts of sexism, racism and the lack of equality in America in the 1950s and 1960s. Many famous artists took the initiative to write protest songs to spread awareness about the cause, generating a broader impact and having different effects on the many different members of society. Protest

Music As Protest Music has been used throughout many wars and conflicts as a way to protest and share the beliefs of people. I choose Creedence Clearwater Revivals song “Fortunate Son”, because this song spoke to the masses during the Vietnam Conflict taking place on the other side of the world. Creedence Clearwater Revival created a song that shared what the many people believed in the United States and helped get their voices heard. “Fortunate Son” shared the true story about majority of the middle and lower class Americans feelings. Vietnam had just gone through a war through 1954 to push France their colonial ruler out.

Freedom rides, lunch counter sit-ins, and Rosa Parks’ famous refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man are all examples of the role of civil disobedience in the fight for equality. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Peaceful protests were the cornerstone of the civil rights movement in the sixties, and through this medium, African Americans got their point across to the nation. When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, it became clear that civil disobedience not only was an effective method, but the most effective one.

At the time when political protest was not often expressed in music form, this song was

The tactics used civil rights movement of both the 1950’s and 1960’s were different helped them succeed in different ways. During the late 1950s the tactics that were used were political, while in the early in 1960s they used social and political tactics to get their goals achieved, but in the late 1960s the tactics that were used were primarily economic and social, In the 1950’s, the civil rights movement was very successful because activist showed the level of racism and segregation in the south. The tactics and resistance made in this time period helped achieve desegregation because and the resistance that the activists dealt with just made them become more aware in the media and hopefully spread nation wide.

After Rosa parks refused to give her seat to white passenger and was arrested. The black people decided to launch a boycott. It denoted all of African Americans walked instead of riding a bus. The boycotters hoped the bus companies would lose money and be forced to abandon their segregation policy. After a year bus boycott, a unit state’s District Court ruling in Browder V. Gayle banned racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.

Violent protest and nonviolent protest in Civil Right Movement In American history, the period of the 1960s always was considered a decade of great social change. This is the era that the group of lower class or color skin became stronger and more confident to assert themselves even though white people still dominated every aspect of American society. During this period, American Civil Rights Movements emerged everywhere, such as Native-Americans Movement, Women’s Movement, Latino Movement, and especially African Americans Movement. By that time, there are many varieties of actions that civil rights activists waged to seek to end racial inequality and secure rights in political, social, and economic for African Americans.

These approaches paved a way for African Americans to voice their freedom, and to show that they have rights as well. Many music artists like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday sang blues, a famous type of music for the black community, to speak of their troubling times. These artists spoke of many casualties like the massive arrests and the mass amount of murders happening at the time. Poets such as W.E.B DuBois and Langston Hughes wrote about similar situations. They mentioned times that they went through in a way way for readers to visualize the tragic times.

2.3 Why is the role of music decisive in the Civil Rights Movement? “We Shall Overcome” is what some people consider to be the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement. As Pete Seeger explains in his book Everybody Says Freedom, it was born in the South as a gospel hymn, where it was called “It’ll Be All Right” and sung in black churches. It travelled throughout the South until it arrived to Pete Seeger and Guy Carawan, who made it popular. In 1958, Pete Seeger performed it in front of Martin Luther King Jr. Two year later, Guy Carawan sang it at the founding convention of SNCC in North Carolina, making it the unofficial soundtrack of the movement (Seeger 8).

Music is not only used to capture peoples hearing but it is used to power peoples minds through the power of an individuals voice. Music served a critical role in the African American’s lives, as it was used to uplift their spirits as well as providing them with hope and strength to fight for civil rights and overcome segregation between white superiority and the unfair treatment of the inferior black. Music was defined as the voice of the people that lived through the oppression of the civil rights movement. During the civil rights movement, there were many different types of music genres sung, dependent on the culture, this included spiritual music; gospel and even folk music, which was performed by musicians, singers and even people of any musical talents. Through this, it brought about the uniting of people to join together and sing songs that helped them go through the oppression of the civil rights movement.

Introduction Question: How crucial was music’s impact on the American civil rights movement? In the American Civil War soldiers marched to the beating of a drum. The sounds were often played by young musicians who carried this responsibility with pride, inflicting upon them a sense of fidelity and allegiance to their companions. As famine afflicted those in Africa, Michael Jackson's song “We Are the World” created empathy and educated many about this heartbreaking reality.