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History 200

Elysia Marksman
History 200
Final Paper

The Early Civil Rights Movement

Introduction-
The events and activities that climaxed in the early 1960s and have now popularly become known as the Civil Rights movement, actually evolved from the incidents that marked the earliest resistance to slavery, first by slaves themselves, then by other organized groups of sympathizers and abolitionists who denounced the institution of slavery. As a result, due to the prominence as well as the greater publicity of these later activities that characterized the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s, it became the accepted and traditional belief that the Early Civil Rights movement began with the organized forms of protests initiated by the Black Churches in the south. However, the reality is that, even though the 1960s activities put the proverbial “icing on the cake” to climax the earlier protests, the resistance movements began and could be traced back even much longer before. It can be appropriately traced back to as far as the incidents involving attempts at uprisings and mutiny during the trans-Atlantic slavery itself. Therefore, though the outward demonstration of opposition was manifested by the various forms of organized protests, from the speeches and marches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the early 1960s, the real resistance began in the individual and collective spirits of the slavers themselves form the time their freedoms were forcefully wrenched away from them at the time of capture.
The background to the movement- Setting the sage for protest
Based on the overall reaction of the slaves themselves to their condition of slavery, it was evident from the onset that even though they may have been physically restrained, and psychologically subdued, the slaves may have been brainwashed to endure their wretched state of bondage, they never truly accepted that lot in spirit. Consequently, many of them were brave enough to show their displeasure by...