The civil rights movement in Usa

The civil rights movement in Usa

In the South, during the fifties, matured a black movement for the equality, directed by the coloured community.

One of the most significant deeds was the buses boycott at Montgomery, in Alabama, launched in 1955 as a protest against the racial segregation.

In 1959 the American Supreme Court of Justice ordered the end of the segregation in the schools: this was one of the most important results reached by the movement.

To support the black movement in the South, the students of the universities of the North of Usa started the "South marches", massive campaignes that sent militants during the summer, to protect the right to vote of the "coloured" people. 

The answers were lynching and murders, while the traditional politic leaders supported the positions of the violents. Even so, the movement reached significant politic successes and it contributed to the overcoming of the segregation.

As from 1963-64, black's agitations showed quickly in the big cities of the North of Usa too, but the problem wasn't the institutional segregation, on the contrary they wanted to preserve the diversity, the social and cultural specificity: equality and diversity, the abolition of the privileges of the whites but also a "self-administration" of the blacks in their communities.

Students aided the Civil Rights Movement (1960)

The Student Rights Movement

'The most exciting things going on in America today are movements to change AmericaThe 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children.'
                                                Mario Savio (Free Speech Movement organizer, 1964)

An outgrowth of the Civil Rights Movement was the Student Rights movement began when students who had participated in the Civil Rights marches brought that same activism right back to the college campuses. Students became more organized and they formed the SDS, Students for A Democratic Society. The SDS set out an ambitious agenda for American students to change society. The SDS led teach-ins at schools from coast to coast and soon thousands of students were joining this new movement for expanded human rights.

At UC Berkeley in 1964 students were prohibited from political activities on campus property. Shocked that they couldn't exercise their freedom of speech on their own campus, the students held rallies on the steps of the Administration building (Sproul Hall) and sit-ins inside demanding their rights. This was the start of the Free Speech Movement.

As students around the country encountered restrictions, they started to demand their Universities and colleges be more responsive to their needs.

Students demanded more freedom to be politically active and to have accountability by the administration for its actions in the community. All over the USA, students whose requests were initially scoffed at, suddenly were taking over administration buildings, holding sit-ins and issuing long lists of demands. Radical student newspapers popped up encouraging even more students to get involved in the issues of the day.

The student movement mobilized young people like never before. Their protests on campuses and in the streets were often met with excessive police brutality. In one notorious scenario, students and residents of Berkeley, turned a dusty campus parking lot into a 'People's Park', liberating it and fixing it up for the use of the community. When the people took to the streets to protest against police brutality, they were met with a hail of bullets that killed and injured many students and citizens.