Pro and Anti Civil Rights Actions

For this week's EOTO (each one teach one) litigation team one and two discussed significant events for pro and anti civil rights actions. After litigation team three and four did the mock trail on Bakke v California, litigation team one gave us examples of some anti civil rights actions. They started off discussing the different assassinations of Civil Rights leaders during the 1950's and 60's. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Harry and Harriette Moore, and Fred Hampton were all brought up as leaders who were assassinated by whites during the Civil Rights Movement. One theme that held true as they were explaining the assassinations of each person, that was the people who killed them either did it out of fear or fear that the movement would spread and change things. As well the team discussed the actions of George Wallace and Bull Connor. Connor as they explained was the Commissioner of Public Safety for Birmingham, Alabama. With this power Bull ordered for fire hoses and police attack dogs to be released on a peaceful Civil Rights protest. This was a truly horrifying event that still to this day conjures up bad memories for some people and put a bad reputation on the city of Birmingham and even the state of Alabama as they were from then on the first thing people thought of as it related to racism in the United States.

In a different light, litigation team two discussed the positives and the influential who helped drive the Civil Rights movement to what we know today. From Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks who need no introduction as Rosa Parks was considered the mother of the movement and Martin Luther King Jr., the main head of the movement. They also talked about the Freedom Riders. These were students from the North who came down to the South in an attempt to integrate the bus systems in the U.S. and more specifically the South. They were successful in their attempt even though Bull Connor and the state of Alabama had set up mobs to inflict violence on these riders. So as a result the government was forced to start implementing the desegregation of buses in the United States. So even though there were a number of anti Civil Rights movements and people who tried their hardest to keep African Americans from getting their way there were some huge positives that helped shine light on the inequities African Americans were experiencing.