African Americans Had Rights

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century segregation within the south was a way of life. It was perfectly normal to everyone that blacks and whites remain separate. The 1960s was a time where African Americans began to act and excel on their civil rights movement more abundantly. Even though slavery was abolished in 1865, it was a period in which they suffered humiliations of all sorts. Many may believe that African Americans had rights and weren't slaves anymore, which is true, but because of racism in the South during the 1960s, there was an absolute segregation that caused African Americans to do more protesting. They had separation of bathrooms, drinking fountains, schools, as well as the separation of seats within public transportation in city buses, along with the right to vote and much more. Therefore, the conditions in the 1960s provoked the African Americans to engage in a march called the Bloody Sunday that which along the way would bring the right vote and segregation to its final end.

The right to vote has always been an issue that African Americans had to face. James James Karales states that, "On August 7, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act." The Voting Rights Act came to be one of the most important laws passed during the era. In the article, "Voting Rights Act" U.S. Congress states, "that the right of citizens of the United States to vote is not denied or abridged on account of race or color, no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election." This Act allows African Americans to vote. However, White American still continued to oppress African Americans when the time to vote came. In the article, "Before the Voting Rights Act," United States Department of Justice states that, "In 1960, the Supreme Court struck down one such effort, in which the state legislature had gerrymandered the city boundaries of Tuskegee, Alabama, so as to remove all but a handful of the city's black registered voters. The Supreme Court ruled that by doing so Alabama had violated the 15th Amendment." That being said, it proves that blacks were allowed to vote but whites couldn't allow that to happen and set a goal to get rid of African Americans. Therefore, the desire to end segregation and ability to vote became one of the main issues they focused on.