african americans Essay -- essays research papers

African Americans continued to live as second class citizens in the 1950s and1960s, especially in the South, despite the Fourteenth Amendment and thefifteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying anyone theright to vote due to race. States passed laws directed at separating the racesand keeping blacks from the polls. During these times, African Americansand other Americans led an organized and strong movement to fight forracial equality. The movement often met with strong opposition, such as inBirmingham, Alabama, where police sprayed protestors with high pressurefire hoses. In the early 1900s W.E.B. Du Bois established the NAACP, (National familiarity for the Advancement of Colored People) which fought to endsegregation, the separation of people on the basis of race. In the case ofBrown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck subdue segregationas unconstitutional. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an NAACPofficer, took a seat in the front row of the colored section of a Montgomerybus. As the bus filled up, the driver ordered Parks and three other AfricanAmerican passengers to empty the row they were occupying so that a whiteman could sit down without having to sit next to any African Americans. Theleaders of the African American community, including many ministers,formed the Montgomery progress Association to organize a boycott. They elected the pastor o...