civil rights

Both the black civil rights and the women’s rights movements had a similar goal in mind: create opportunities for their groups that were as equal as the majority had, and to end discrimination against them and enforce constitutional voting rights to them. These two movements had to deal with the question of how one goes about pursuing such opportunities effectively. In this essay my goal is to compare and contrast the effectiveness of the methods used in both the black civil rights and the women’s rights movements. These two movements were characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities face by these two movements. Forms of protests and disobedience included boycotts, marches, of course, the woman’s suffrage and a wide range of other nonviolent activities. The movement within the larger Civil Rights Movement (which started with the Brown v.Board of Ed. ruling and moved through desegregation in public facilities up the voting rights act) that I want discuss first is the Selma to Montgomery march that Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King Jr. helped organize. Through the years of struggle the government proved unable to secure civil rights for Black people, and so activists started to take matters into their own hands in the early 1960’s. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began the Selma voting rights campaign, which was to get blacks registered to vote. As the campaign started running out of money SCLC and MLK moved in to take it over and worked on continuing. The Selma to Montgomery march was in response to white murders of blacks. They proceeded with the march even when the governor ordered to stop, and as such were met with immense

References: page http://www.history.com/topics/the-fight-for-womens-suffrage http://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement