Civil Rights Movement
In a broad sense, Civil Rights can be defined as "the basic rights that all people in a society should have, for example the right to be treated fairly by the law, the right to express their ideas, and the right to practise their religion" (Macmillan Dictionary online); as related to the American Civil Rights Movement, they refer to the 13th and 14th amendments to the US Constitution: the abolition of slavery, and the recognition of legal citizenship and equal protection under the law to African Americans respectively.
A movement can be defined as a series of organised activities implemented by a group of people who share the same objective and work together to achieve it.
The Civil Rights Movement was an era dedicated to activism for equal rights and treatment of African Americans in the United States. During this period, people organised a whole series of protests and demonstrations calling for the prohibition of discrimination and the end of segregation.
Before the Civil Rights Movement, there were lots of events implying discrimination against African Americans: from the 16th century slave traders imported people from their African countries to work on their plantations. They were property of the plantation owners. The slaves had no rights, they were sold at auctions like beasts. They worked on the plantations until they died and protest was severely punished.
Although the Emancipation Proclamation issued in 1963 by US President Abraham Lincoln had abolished slavery, discriminatory attitudes towards black people persisted. They could not vote, could not go to the same schools, sit on the same buses or go to the same restaurants as white people.
The Civil Rights Movement began on the 1st of December 1955, when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Alabama, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger.
Following Rosa Park's arrest, black people formed the Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King and on December 5th, 1955 started a bus boycott which lasted 381 days, until the Supreme Court agreed that the Montgomery law was unconstitutional, on December 20th, 1956.
The Civil Rights Movement peaked in the march on Washington DC, on August 28th, 1963 when Martin Luther King led one of the most important demonstrations in human history.
Many people argue that the Civil Rights Movement is still going on, but the protests started with Rosa Parks ended in 1965, when the Voting Rights Act outlawed discriminatory voting practices in the USA.