SS144 Unit 9 Assignment: The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement

SS144 Sociology

The Civil Rights Movement

In the 1960s Civil Rights Movement there was protesting and rioting for all men to be treated equal. This footage by WHEC-TV shows just how these demonstrations were back then. While some protesters tried to keep the protests nonviolent, others did not.

This footage was filmed in Georgia in the year 1962. When the footage starts it shows how a black man is being shoved repeatedly. While another black man is being arrested brutally. Most of the black people are just chanting loudly. While there are others holding signs. Women are not exempt from being arrested, this film shows a woman being carried off, and men being dragged off by police officers.

The Civil Rights Movements are a worldwide series of political movements for equality before the law, that peaked in the 1960s. This movement would fall in the category of both Reformative Social Movement which seeks to reform some specific aspect of society and Transformative Social Movement, in contrast to Reformative Social Movements, this movement seeks to transform the social order itself. (Henslin, 2017). This movement wanted to reform the ways in which society views and treated the black communities.

The tactics used in this movement were mostly nonviolent but escalated to violence, many protesters were lined up on the streets, some were chanting while others were marching with signs. In return to their efforts the police can be seen resorting to unleashing dogs on the patroons and hosing the protesters with fire hoses.

“The movement’s canonical status and sweeping impacts on political, economic, and social life has given rise to a loosely bounded conception of an associated era, with much scholarship focusing on the contours of racial discrimination and mobility in the “post-civil rights” decades that have followed.” (Cunningham & Fox, 2018) This was the beginning of the end of segregation of different races.

It was a sad time but a moving moment in history. Blacks ended up being able to go into areas in which once before forbidden to go. Even though this movement met resistance equality proved to prevail. Racism seems to be an ongoing fight but life as it was once known had changed with the Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. I could not say if I was back in that time if I would be brave enough to stand up for what is right because this was a time full of hate and people were not scared to use violence to keep life the way it was. I believe in equality for all people and this movement was one of many for Civil Rights for all.

References

Civil Rights Movement (stock footage / archival footage) Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFKx6HJLC7U&t=10s

Cunningham, D., & Fox, N. (2018, November 20). Civil Rights. Retrieved January 13, 2019, from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0147.xml

Henslin, J.M. (2017). Sociology, 14th Edition. [Purdue University Global Bookshelf]. Retrieved from https://purdueuniversityglobal.vitalsource.com/#/books/undefined/https://purdueuniversityglobal.vitalsource.com/#/books/undefined/